a cop-out

So yes, I really am going to put parts (most) of a letter that I just wrote to my family on this blog.  Because it's my blog and I can do what I want with it.  So there.

Russian is my constant struggle, but it's a struggle that I enjoy and that I've been seeing improvement in.  Basically, if this is how school always was, I would stay in school for the rest of my life.

Moscow as a city is really big, but its also so accessible because of the metro.  A friend told me today that Moscow has the world's biggest or most extensive maybe metro system.  I think I would believe him.  It may also be true that Moscow has the world's loudest and noisiest metro in the world, but what the heck you can't have everything.  By the way, if anybody ever wants to see Moscow later in life, I would be very happy to come with you and show you around.  It's really pretty easy to navigate (well, if you can read Cyrillic... I guess if you can't then Moscow would be somewhat of a nightmare), and there are tons of cool places to go and see.

The food continues to be really very good, even if my landlady does use a liter of oil to cook my omelettes (honestly, how the devil do you spell that word???).  I really do love my porridge that she makes for me, it's basically oatmeal but it's delicious.  Yesterday, however, I ate at a Kyrgystani shashlik place (which is basically shish-kebab) and recieved the most ridiculously small portion size for way too much money.  It was like five or six bucks for four or five measly pieces of chicken.  Luckily I was smarter than the rest; I ordered the one that said "shashlik from chicken breast" and not the one called "shashlik from chicken".  If they felt the need to differentiate between "chicken" and "chicken breast", then who knows exactly what plain old "chicken" means.  It could mean anything.  For most of the other kids, what it meant was a few pieces of chicken bone skewered by a poker.  The icing on the cake was when the dude tried to tell me that he thought I ordered another plate of measly potatoes when I had only asked him whether or not he was going to bring it out at all, so there was another plate of potatoes and he was going to bring it out.  He set it down on the table and I asked if he was putting it on the check.  He shrugged his shoulders awkwardly and uneasily said, yes, it would be.  I spluttered my indignation in Russian the best I could, and it's a good thing I did because the guy cracked after about 10 seconds and said that he would take it off the check.  As a sorry epilogue to the whole dining experience, we went over to the nearby Makdonald's and I filled up on a fifty cent (or fifteen ruble) ice cream cone and a cheap hamburger.

I am enjoying spending as much time with the Russian members of the church as possible.  Today after church one of my new friends invited me over to their place for a sort of lunch party, and although it was a little awkward for me at first, because let's face it, I am not exactly the most fully functional social creature when it comes to speaking Russian, I threw caution to the winds and just got to know everybody the best I could and actually had a really fun, successful sunday afternoon with friends.  It was awesome-- we actually had our own little spiritual thought given by one of the girls in the apartment.  The members here rock.  The youth in Moscow are way tight and everybody likes each other, as far as I can tell.  Earlier this week basically all the youth in the city got together in the church for one of the young men to open his mission call, and everybody was just digging it.  He got called to the Novosibirsk mission, which I think is the biggest mission in terms of square miles in the world.  Cool stuff.  But basically, a lot of them are either returned missionaries or just really gung-ho about going on missions, which is just the coolest thing ever.

Which brings me to church today.  We all met in a big concert hall adjust to a massive hotel, because Elder Perry visited us.  Guys I hope that you don't judge me, but I drifted in and out of sleep the whole meeting.  I really tried so hard, but I've just been so active, just always on my feet or wandering around the city that I'm really tired but I don't get enough sleep either, so I can't tell you alllll the details of even Elder Perry's talk.  But.  He'll be doing a special fireside Wednesday night for the youth that I am for SURE going to be at and not fall asleep, and it will be specifically for us and I'm just really excited about it, to tell the honest truth.  But for today.

It was cool.  He spoke specifically to the youth of Moscow, saying that they are the future of the church and that they will be the foundation that all future generations will be built off of here in Moscow.  So, they need to make sure that they have in their character four important cornerstones.  This is where it got slightly hazy.  I know that the first cornerstone is the testimony of Jesus Christ and his Atonement-- he testified of this and of course whenever an apostle testifies about anything it's electrifying.  The second cornerstone that they needed to have strong and intact was the testimony of Joseph Smith, and more specifically, the First Vision.  Once again, his testimony was powerful.  The third cornerstone was the Book of Mormon, and he actually gave the youth the challenge to read the whole Book of Mormon before the end of the summer.  Very cool, I will do what I can to bug them all about it for as long as I'm here.  And I'll just keep plugging on through my Russian Book of Mormon as fast as I can.  So yeah, the fourth cornerstone... not too sure.  I even asked some of the youth to tell me and they couldn't seem to remember what it was either.  I'm sure somebody knows, but I really couldn't tell you know.

He was so jolly and tall and great, the apostles really are wonderful people.  A lot of people got to shake his hand and get their picture taken with him.  I kind of just stood aside the way I normally do in those situations, because an apostle for the Russian saints I think is much more rare than for an American saint like me.

Well cool guys.  If anyone actually makes it through that mammoth block of text, I will bring them back some Russian candy or something.  In the mean time, here are some cool pictures to look at that I took at night (except for the lovely one starring several well-known American citizens):