5/19. Registration Fail.

Today…was interesting. I woke up around 8 (I got maybe 6 hours of sleep this time! Yay improvement!), hurried to school so that I could get on the Internet for a bit, and headed off to school for class.  The teacher today was wonderful. Her English is great and she’s very enthusiastic. Unfortunately we decided that it might be better if a new class was started for myself and three other boys (I think two are from China, and the other from Taiwan). I can imagine its frustrating for the teacher to have the class split in half with really new people and those who are getting close to fluency. I went upstairs to what us Americans might call the Registrar’s Office and my teacher explained the dilemma. They said they’d have a new class set up as soon as possible…so probably Monday. I sat and listened for a while until 3 when I needed to go and get registered.

REGISTRATION IS A NIGHTMARE IF YOU DON’T SPEAK RUSSIAN.

It was a lovely 15-minute walk to the building where registration takes place, and I found the building I was told to go to without any problems, but upon requesting to be register…I encountered problems. The woman who was supposed to help me was in a terrible mood, and told me she couldn’t do it. I tried to explain that it was my last day to take care of it and she said “It is impossible to do it today, I have to go, I’m busy.”

And then I was like “A’SCUSE MEEE?!?!”. Not really but I was perturbed. I called Dasha who works at the school to explain what was going on and she said she would call and see what was going on. She reported back that everything would be fine if I went on Wednesday at noon to register. Side note, I walked to and from the main building to this registration building at least 3 times and the same group of men smoking kept staring at me like I was crazy and foreign. I may or may not be… That is still pending. I go back tomorrow though so hopefully things work out smoothly. Though if today was any indication of how smoothly things go, tomorrow should be strange and uncomfortable as well. Hooray.

I walked back to the Metro and headed home for some dinner. It’s a workout just commuting to and from school. I feel like I’m in a mosh pit during rush hour waiting to get into the metro station, or when I’m getting back on the escalator leaving the metro. You know when you’re being pushed against railings and would fall over if there weren’t people smashed against you on every side. That is what it feels like. Haha and the reason for this is that only one door is opened to get into the building; once you’re through the door, its relatively calm. There are a few doors that could let more people in, but they only open one. Maybe this helps with the moshing on the inside of the building. In a significantly smaller space, that would undoubtedly be worse.

I got home and was really exhausted.  Being stressed out about documentation, having enough money to pay for those pieces of documentation, knowing where you’re going, and trying to understand people/get people to understand you is tiring if you haven’t tried it. I ate dinner, put on comfy clothes, and climbed into bed around 6:30 I wanted to go to sleep but there was no way I was going to risk getting off this close to normal sleep schedule I was now on. Irina went out to do something for a few hours. We’re still and will be for a while, at that place where we don’t really know what the other person is doing. For example, I have no idea where my surrogate grandmother is. She went away Sunday night and I haven’t seen her since. Maybe she leaves for the weekdays, maybe she has friends she’s visiting, or maybe she has a boyfriend who lives far from here…I just don’t know.

I think about the day when everything clicks. I’m going to ask so many questions about these first few weeks where I had no idea what was going on… Soon enough.