Sunday Adventure

The other day I went with one of my friends/coworkers, Masha, to go volunteer at a dog shelter by her house. I managed to adventure all the way to the other side of the city and was extremely proud of myself. I had to take the metro and a marshrutka, which is like a communal taxi. Marshrutkas are a little more complicated than taking the bus cause you actually have to tell the driver to stop at the next stop, so you have to know where you're getting off, which I only vaguely knew. Masha told me to go to the hospital, and luckily the woman sitting next to me was going there too. So I made it to the right place without getting lost once!

This is a marshrutka. They're basically terrifying minibuses.

Masha gave me the grand tour of her apartment and I met her brother and then we headed to the shelter. There was a fire recently, so the shelter is actually mostly gates and collections of handmade dog houses and it's kinda sad looking. But there were a bunch of people there taking care of the dogs, building back the shelter, donating food. It was a cool little community place. All we had to do was show up and say we wanted to walk some dogs and they brought us in and sent two dogs out. No system or anything, just, "Here you go, bye."
We walked through the woods, which was basically just made up of birch trees and was really pretty. From there, we walked along a stream next to a whole bunch of dachas (country/vacation houses). I got a few pictures that weren't great, so I'll have to go back and get a whole bunch of all the different dachas. But we walked all through the little dacha village until we got to the river. The river here is called the Ob and it runs down the center of the city. The dogs were thrilled to get some splashing in, so we hung out there for a little while before we turned around and went back.

Here's me and Doc the dog in front of the river
 

On our way back, we walked past an abandoned lot next to some apartment buildings and we found this guy:

Me with the random horse hanging out in the abandoned lot

I guess Russia hadn't been weird enough for me that day. Just when I think these seem pretty normal around here, something always shows up.

 

 

A Dose of Russian Doctors

Now, if you know me, you'll know that I hate going to the doctor. Unfortunately, in order to teach in Russia, you have to get a medical book and have a million doctors sign off and say that you're healthy enough to work with children. I can't really complain about that - it makes. But the entire process is horrible and leaves a lot of room for improvement.

To start off, you need to get an official medical booklet. To get this, you bring some passport photos, your passport, and 300 rubles to some old women in a random building in a random courtyard. I did this first thing on Monday and was sent away because I didn't have a translation of my passport. So today, I had my registration and that seemed to work, because I was then sent to a very nice woman who gave me my booklet.

Then came the hard part. Thankfully, one of the girls that works at the school, Lena, came and endured everything with me. I am beyond grateful for her help. I may have to bake her cookies. Anyway, after taking some money out (which was an ordeal itself because four different ATMs didn't work), we went to the medical center. The receptionist gave me a bunch of papers, one of which had a list of all fifteen things I had to have signed off. And to add an extra little twist, the offices all closed for the day in only an hour and fifteen minutes. Oh, Russia.

The first room I went to - the general physician I think - was misleading. The doctor was nice and spoke a bit of English. There was a pleasant old man hanging out who spoke excellent English and we had a little conversation. Then after some confusion about a really long line, I was whisked off to the first real doctor, where I had to suffer through an extremely unpleasant and rude woman asking me questions I didn't understand and then yelling at me for not bringing my translator. Thankfully, though, my friend rescued me and the whole thing was over in a matter of minutes.

I went back to the confusing line again, which turned out to be the lab. I went in and the woman in the room very cheerfully took out the mini razorblade she needed to cut my finger open. I'm hardly exaggerating. It was a thin piece of metal that was around an eighth of an inch wide. The woman distracted me and then made fun of me for jumping when she stabbed my finger. I promise I'm not just being a baby. I've had my finger pricked for little blood tests before and that's not bad at all. This was a stabbing. After which, she squeezed my finger and continued to collect blood in mini vials for about five minutes. Sadly, that was the most pleasant experience of my day.

After a quick checkup at the dentist, I was done at the medical center until next week. So I headed over to the hospital to get my x-ray. But the x-ray machines are all broken at the hospital, so I have to do that next week too. But once I've got that and all my lab results are back, I get to go to the therapist, who is the one that signs off on the whole booklet.

Somehow all of that was done by two, so I was able to head home early for the day. I went home, showered, and curled up in my newly beautiful bed to do some reading and TV watching. But mostly I'm telling you that because I went to Ikea yesterday and bought new stuff for my apartment and I wanted a reason to post this photo of my new bedroom:

I'm in love with my apartment now. Although the jury's still out on that clock; it scares the crap out of me when it goes off.