Sometimes I wonder how paranoid some people are here about getting sick. The more I talk to my students, the more they seem to confirm my suspicions: most Muscovites hate the idea of being ill. It all started when I met a girl at a bar who explained that she was on sick leave. "Wait, you're not working because you're sick, yet you're out at a bar," I mused, "You must be really ill!" "No, you don't get it," she laughed."My work gives me two weeks off for sick leave, regardless of how I feel. Last week I felt horrible, but now I feel fine, so I might as well enjoy myself, right?" Wow, that's a concept if I ever heard one, I wonder if it's more because the office doesn't want germs around rather than the company wants its employees to recuperate.

I've also heard from my lovely accounting students how many precautions you have to take with a newborn baby. After childbirth, you must stay in the hospital for over a week for observation. What? I remember my mother's story of how quickly she went in and out of the hospital when she had me, it only took one afternoon!

So you can only imagine my surprise when I went to the doctor's office. It was probably for the silliest reason imaginable: I'd punctured my finger with a piece of plastic from a thumbtack, and after a few days it had gotten infected. Not wanting to repeat the miserable situation I'd had on Reunion Island (I won't go into details), I decided to use my newfound Russian health insurance (all expenses paid by the company) to experience my first visit to a Russian medical facility.

At first it was confusing, as I entered the building, using whatever Russian I had to explain that I had an appointment with the doctor. As the receptionist snapped at me, the lady at the coat room smiled and helped me with my jacket and gave me the blue footies to put on, so I wouldn't track mud around the office upstairs. As I made it up the stairs, I was surprised: instead of seeing the typical colorful, cheerful waiting room I was used to back in the states, all I saw was a long pale corridor, that stretched for miles, with a scattering of couches from one end to the other. I signed my paperwork (fortunately the Russians don't believe in piles of medical forms, with 100 questions because I probably would have accidentally checked the boxes in Russian that say I'm allergic to everything and that I have 100 things wrong with me). Despite my perfectly clean tracks, along with everyone else's, the place seemed, well grim, with no personality, no warmth. I wondered if maybe I'd been sent to the wrong doctor's office.

Fortunately for me, my doctor could muster up a few words in English, and his drawing skills were impeccable. As he and his assistant took me into the operating room, I eyed the operating table with dismay. Why did I have to lie down under bright lights....for a finger? But the doctor was friendly, and asked me what my parents thought of my adventures in Moscow. He must be a father, I thought.

The good news was by the end of my "operation" I didn't need any medication, and I came to the realization that I had only waited 30 minutes: compared to my doctor at Kaiser, that was nothing! I walked back to the coat room, and impressed the lady with my few words of Russian: Spaceebo ee dasveh danya!

Going for a Moscow drive

Sometimes when you live in a huge city it's hard to picture the whole place pieced together. Sure you can stare at the map in the metro all you want, but it doesn't become real since you climb deep down into one station only to magically appear in another. The idea of walking places becomes preposterous since, even though it would probably take you only 10 minutes to get there, you're more than likely to get lost along the way. I'm somewhat ashamed to say that only now have I figured out how to walk to the school near Red Square from a different station than "Okhotniy Riad."

The best way to finally make sense of it all is to either: a- walk from one end of the city to another, which might take you 5 hours (not such a viable option when it's a cozy 3.2 degrees Farenheit outside). Or, option b- find a friend who not only has a car, but comes up with the crazy idea of using said car to travel around said city (aka Moscow). Option b didn't occur to me until my friend Igor casually invited me to go on a "drive" with him and his friend Tanya.

Moscow is a rather imposing city by day, and even more so by night. Everywhere you turn there are bright neon lights: on bridges, on buildings, on billboards, and on the few sky scrapers that Moscow has. The lights dazzle you from either side of the Moscow River, which winds its way through the city. Regardless of where you're driving, you always feel like you're going in circles, because you actually are! As many times as people have explained to me the circle pattern of Moscow, I still never quite get used to the fact that roads never stop here, and you can keep going in a loop forever if you want. Of course there are the spokes to this wheel, which run straight, but you have to choose the right one or else you will be lost forever.

The buildings themselves are quite impressive. There's not really a skyline, like in New York, since most buildings are on the shorter side. There are the 7 sisters, 7 uniformly imposing towers from the Soviet era, which circle somewhat around the "White House," (The USSR's response to the US's by being bigger and taller of course). But admittedly when you go to the part of town with the true sky scrapers, which didn't exist 12 years ago, you truly see the modern, flashy side of Moscow. The architecture is incredible, with every shape and size imaginable, and some pretty creative buildings too. There's one sky scraper where you can see a pulsing red light in the upper right corner: the beating heart of a large giant. Igor pointed out his favorite building: an every which way stack of blocks that blink lights that slowly change colors. We stopped and admired it from the bottom, right off the side of the large highway.

As we drove by, Igor pointed out interesting monuments, buildings, and parks, as I soaked in all of this newfound knowledge. Then he pointed out something that I would have never noticed, as obvious as it was: so many of the buildings we were driving past, regardless of style or age were....empty. "There's another apartment building. I guess buildings, really. Nobody lives there." He definitely had meant buildings, because the place was huge and Igor was right, no-one home. "A lot of Moscow is like that," explained Tanya, and when I asked why, Igor shrugged. He told me it was because the terrain in Moscow is swamp like, and the soil incredibly unstable. "Nobody can live there, it's too dangerous, but they can't afford to demolish it." Really? I wondered. Maybe there are economic reasons too, although the whole thing confused me to begin with, since I could see everywhere I turned more cranes building newer and taller skyscapers. As we finally made it to Sparrow Hills to look down on the city, Tanya and I admired the architecture as we danced away the cold. Igor took out his lovely SLR digital camera, aimed towards the city below, and...."Ah man, my batteries are dead!" More like frozen! We all laughed, glad to have an excuse to run back to the warm car we had left behind.

Buying vegetables has never been more exciting!

I'll admit...when I first got to Moscow, I was too afraid to talk to people. If they asked me for directions, I shrugged, at restaurants I just pointed, and at the grocery store I just handed them money. It was terrifying to think of even uttering a word in this crazy language they call Russian, which is often muttered at such a speed it's hard to tell whether someone is angry or happy.

So I cheated. In Moscow, like most modern cities, globalization has taken over, and super markets and department stores reign supreme, where you can find anything you want at Auchaun (a popular French super market that's about the size of Wallmart), or at least at the 24 hour mini-mart on every corner, including mine. It's great, you go in, you stare at the words for a while on the labels, fortunately the numbers are legible to even a naive American who can sort of divide approximately by 30 (the average conversion of a 30 rubles is 1 US dollar...or it was).

But ever since I started taking my Russian lessons, I've become a little braver, and have decided it's time to experience the true Russian market - Soviet style.

Back in Soviet days people had to wait in line for their rations, which were often handed to them by the clerks. It seems to me that the old style grocery store accommodates this well: you have to ask for everything. There are no aisles, there's not much you can just grab yourself in this large square store. When you walk inside, you feel like you're in a different era, with wooden floors and rickety old windows that probably have seen better days. And yet everything is neat and tidy inside because you have to politely ask one of the many grocers to grab you those tomatoes, or grab you that bag of flour. And if this isn't perfect practice for speaking Russian, I don't know what is. Today I asked for my two tomatoes (два помидоры, pronounced "dvah pohmeedooreeh") and was pleased when I understood how much they cost without looking at a cash register screen: 50 рублей.

I decided to use my newfound confidence to check out a "kiosk." In order to explain what a kiosk is, all you need to imagine is a box with a panel of doors/windows on one side, tempting you with anything from shampoo to purses to fruits to electronics. The one I found happens to sell my absolute favorite: лаваш (lavash), a bread that has made it into Russian culture, compliments of Georgia. With my poor Russian the baker deduced that I must be from either England or America. "Aha!" he grinned when I admitted I was American. "what, er, shtart?" "извините?" I replied. I gave him an apologetic smile. "Shtart, er, New Jersey, New York, California!" "California," I replied and he smiled. "Da....Arnold Schwarzenegger!" I laughed all the way home. California may be well known for its nice beaches and beautiful cities, but nobody will ever forget us, thanks to dear old Arnold.