: the adventures of valerie :

whew!  finally off the 70 hour train.  itching for internet, itching from not having showered for nearly 4 days, but all-in-all it wasn't all that bad.  i'm in krasnoyarsk now, how random is that? somewhere in the middle of siberia.  it's one of the options for timezone settings in my ipod though, so it MUST be somewhere important, right?

once again, one of my first observations is that i would be completely lost without frances.  it is impossible to get by with just english and hand signals here.  however, frances did nearly get us in a dangerous situation.  imagine us, the only 2 foreigners, in a "platzkart" traincar with 54 beds, mostly russian families.  stuffy, dried fish, beer, and BO stench is everywhere because the windows only open a crack.  very angry "provinista"(train car manager lady, who is the stereotypical short-haired stumpy-legged frumpy middle-aged russian woman who just shouts at people).  we made friends with a couple college boys, one of who spoke some english-- sweet kids, and we had a great time laughing and trying to communicate with them for the first 2 days of the train ride.  frances and i teach them how to play a card game, which they both proceeded to win 2 times in a row. frances proclaims loudly in russian: "well at least we won the cold war!" in the quiet train car.  she then continues to say something i don't understand, but i can see the people around us look very unhappy. turns out she decided insulting putin (who the russians LOVE) would also be a good idea. hm. luckily, nothing came of it and they told us "there are a lot of russians in this car." 

another random factoid: they all call elton john (who is very popular here) "sir gay"=sergey (common russian name). get it? he's knighted in england, and he's gay. i had a good laugh about that one, because i've heard it from a few different people already!

so many more things to write about!  the scenery was beautiful-- we are about halfway across russia now, and mostly it's just been flat with lots of birch trees, rivers, and scattered industrial development. lots of cranes, endless smokestacks, and old russian ladies walking along the train tracks with bags of onions. 

we have yet to really meet any backpackers, so it's just the two of us bumming around siberia. people have been very excited to talk to us and practice their broken english, which is a welcome change from the bustle and disinterest of moscow. 

i'll try to get to my emails finally this weekend, as we will be here until monday morning. email me your updates kids! 

so much to write, so little time!  i'm still in moscow, leaving tomorrow morning to start the trans-siberian journey.  after returning the tickets frances bought, changing locations and trains, we have settled on going to krasnoyarsk (in the middle of the map below).  lots of tickets are booked up, so we're on a slower train... it'll take us about 70 hours on straight train time, in platzkart (the lowest class sleeper cabins, which has 54 beds in 1 traincar).  we hear it'll be a dismal adventure from the russians we've been hanging out with, but how can we say no to an $80 ticket?

here's a link to a better map, and another map which will give you an idea of what i've been trying to decipher while i'm here. i am getting pretty good at reading (sounding out the letters) even if i don't know what it means.  frances has been nice about picking out words that are english cognates for me to read so that i can be proud of myself when i recognize words that mostly look like alphabet soup :)

the past few days have been great. we went to chekov for the weekend (one of france's friends from when she studied here drove us around, let us stay with his family, and showed us around the small town of chekov about 2hrs south of moscow), and celebrated a lovely russian girl's bday at a campsite on the oka river, a few hours outside of moscow.  there was vodka and singing and dancing, how russian!  very fun, except that the bday girl told frances to translate to me that she can see the future and she had a vision 2 years ago that we would visit her, and that she saw that i would die!  geez.  buzz kill?  she said to stay away from this weird dancing guy and don't go swimming at night. i survived the weekend, luckily.  even with that, i am so grateful for the very authentic russian experience i had, between staying with a russian family and eating potatoes, and eating potatoes down by the river with elton john and europop-dance music blaring from different campsites.  one of my first russian words include "patom" which means "later," in response to calls to drink more vodka.

other than that, lots of touristy stuff here in moscow, including seeing the kremlin, st basil's church (everything looks like it's right out of disneyland--so colorful!), many WWII memorials, and history and language lessons galore from frances (i can't possible repay her with the 3-4 days we plan to spend in china. she's been great!). 

i wanted to share 1 random cool thing here that our buddy from chekov explained to us-- when driving, on coming traffic will flash their lights to signal that we are coming up on police parked on the side of the road!  how nice is that??  the police are so corrupt here, they tend to pull people over for anything they can and demand bribes, so citizens have united in this one universal sign to slow down.  i think we should start that in the US...

running out of time at the internet, ciao! i'll respond to emails later, sorry guys!

i'm at the airport in amsterdam now, about to fly to moscow to meet up with frances.  the last few days here have been a big whirlwind tour of amsterdam, with a couple very frustrating snags regarding my flight to moscow.  i won't go into the details, but FYI NEVER FLY LOT POLISH AIRLINES!  well, the name says it all.  i will probably be flying on a paper airplane for all i know.

first off, i have some big news:  change of plans for me regarding grad school-- i'm going to columbia instead of emory!!!!! long story short, i decided i reaaaaaly didn't want to go to emory and reaaaaaly wanted to go to columbia/nyc, and last month submitted a new application for review (again, which is silly since i was already accepted months ago and decided to go to emory).  the admissions committee met yesterday and i am officially going to get my MPH through the department of epidemiology!  i was so worried because the program is already more than full this year, and that's why i haven't mentioned it... anyway, i have been jumping for joy and so relieved to be excited to go to grad school.

ok, back to travel stuff.  a few things i forgot to mention from london: i saw the play Avenue Q , and it was great!  i highly recommend it-- i enjoyed it a lot even though i usually don't like musicals.  another random fun thing was i finally played ultimate frisbee for the first time (and hey i wasn't as bad i thought i would be) in the park with raj and a group he plays with, and some other random folks who joined.  i was so incredibly lucky with weather in london-- no rain and lots more sunshine than expected.  finally, i'd forgotten to mention one of the most interesting  touristy things i did-- i sat in on the house of commons debate in the parliament!  and just by chance, they were debating expanding the NHS (national health service) to include increased services for stroke patients--a topic that is actually relevant to my work and study.  i was hoping more for the debates where they start screaming and cursing at each other, but i'll was alright with health care discussion.

as for amsterdam, i've been here sunday noon to early wed morning.  a friend met me at the airport and we went to his house about 30min outside downtown amsterdam (once again, not quite backpacking yet when i have friends to meet me at the airport, stay with, and take me around-- especially here when i don't know any dutch).  it was great to see daan, the 4th person of our group of travellers in vietnam (i saw the other 2 last week).  from his house, we biked to the beach, about 8 miles away.  it is SO bike friendly here-- all separate bike lanes and flat trails, and everyone seems to commute by bike.  the beach he took me to was so local and euro, in the sense that it was a strip of clubs/bars right on the water, only open in the summer, blasting dance music even in the afternoon.  i don't know why we don't have anything like this in the US!  it would be so fun to have a beach only filled with young people (families go to a different one) and not of the frat variety. 

as i'm running out of internet time-- highlights included chatting lots with daan and his very friendly family (yay for getting the local point of view and history!), doing the usual touristy stuff (canal boat, museums, lots of walking and stopping for beers and coffee, eating dutch cheese-yum!, heineken brewery, walking through the red light district), and meeting up with roman, anne's little brother!  daan was great about showing me/us around, and it was so random that roman was here on the same days as me!  love random travel... 

i have to run.  love and miss you guys!