I do not really like lists that compare one country to another and comment on things that are strange or different in say Fredonia compared to the US. However I do feel compelled at this point to point out a few funny, odd and just plain interesting observations and events I have observed here that have not really had a home in any other place in my blog.
1. I have only seen a single spider in my entire time here. However I am not sure what is more interesting or odd, the fact that there are not many spiders here or the fact that I noticed it.
2. Russians have a very different taste in shoes then Americans do. Most men you encounter on the street or in the metro will be wearing black tennis or leather shoes. And most women will be wearing shoes with heals of some kind, the younger the woman the higher the heals.
3. I like that they charge for plastic bags in grocery and other stores here. Often you don’t really need a bag to bring your items home, or it’s easy to carry one with you when you know you are going shopping. That is much less wasteful and encourages planning shopping trips.
4. Russian produce is nowhere near as modified as American produce is and as a consequence I think it tastes much better. In fact it is like getting organic food at insanely low prices!
5. The night is so much quieter without the sounds of police helicopters and planes landing at Long Beach Airport, and here we can see stars at night despite living in a city of 5 million.
6. As overhyped as it might be, living in a country really is the only way to really learn a language. I have gone from having to use pre-caned phrases and responses to questions to now being able to form a sentence from scratch in my head. In effect I am beginning to be able to think in Russian and that’s only going to help me learn even more.
7. Not being able to drink the water (or use it to brush my teeth) is still annoying. It’s not too hard to use bottled (or boiled) water for everything and thankfully bottled water and bottled drinks are very inexpensive, but I will defiantly appreciate the safety of American tap water upon my return.
8. Having a metro and reliable integrated mass transit system is one of the best things a city and region can ever do, get on the ball LA and Socal!
9. I know I have said this before but it bears repeating, in the course of my conversations with friends here I have come to the conclusion that there are parts of the US which are much more foreign to my frame of reference then other courtiers I have visited. And at times even parts of Russia seem more similar.
10. It may sound a bit cliché, but people here really are similar to us normal Americans. In all the little details of normal life we are quite the same. People here appreciate you holding open the door for them, little children play and sing, preteens chat constantly wherever they go, you get good waiters and bad waiters, helpful employees and non-helpful ones, some people are very patient with us foreigners, others just give up or complain about us not speaking Russian in Russian (which, quite ironically we can understand), and everywhere we go the vast majority of people just want to live their own lives and not get in anybody’s way.
(That is of course not to say there are not thousands of documentable cultural, procedural and methodical differences that I could document. But to do so seems rather pointless as most items are of a trivial nature)
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