5/20. Registration success! And I make a new friend again!

Today was crazy as predicted. I went back to the registration building at noon, but was met with bad news. I would need to navigate myself over to the new building because they had changed locations for a renovation! So since I didn’t have a choice, I wondered around for a bit. I went into two possible Registration locations, but was wrong both times. I called Dasha and told her I had no idea where I was going. She explained that if I went back to the Philology and Arts faculty building, room 14, I would find Maksim, who would then show me where the new building was.

I feel like a child everywhere I go. I really like doing things by myself and take pride in my independence and common sense. Situations like these, however, make me feel so needy. Needy is good sometimes, but being this needy for an entire week is starting to get to me.

Maksim helped me find the building (turns out I needed to go around the second building, locate another building a little further down the driveway, find a door behind some trucks that were unloading things from the old building, head up 1 flight of stairs, go down a small corridor of chairs, enter the room at the end of the hall, and go in the door to the left.) We filled out the registration application, but as Maksim continued to make little mistakes with some of the information he was putting down (Oh, and he was filling this out for me because the registration application is all in Russian), we later found out that that would lead us to having to fill it out again. They gave us another application, and told us to come back with it done in an hour. They were going to have lunch.

But, being the optimist I am, this was actually for the better. I ended up getting to meet a Norwegian girl (with perfect English!) named Ann-Corinne. She helped me fill out my document the second time (and then the third time because I messed up on something). She was registering again because she had gone back to Norway for the weekend to be with her boyfriend, and each time you re-enter Russia you are supposed to register again. She is once of the loveliest people I’ve ever met. She was in Russia about 2 years ago, studying for a semester with one of her close friends. She said she had an amazing time and was partying and learning and looking forward to returning. Between then and now, she has been in Russia since September, but explained that it wasn’t the same kind of experience this time. The long distance is starting to really get to her boyfriend and since he is THE boyfriend, she’s just looking forward to school being over and being back in Norway with him. Ah...love...

We’re going together on Friday to pick up our registration. I finish class at 1pm on Fridays, so we’re getting lunch first. Ah lunch….such a foreign thing...and not at this McDonalds I’m always at either!!!