... bad news : we've had a few rat sightings

Coincidence, it rules my existence here. For instance, today happens to be the 28th. The same day that I left in August three months ago to leave for Moscow. When you're in a culture that you're familiar with, it's easy to look at coincidences and find a plausible explanation for it. If you run into someone you know in the middle of Portland from a different city, you might guess that there's a concert going on that night and that anyone with a decent pair of taste buds and as an empty wallet as mine will end up on Stark St. for some grub.

However, when you're in a city whose culinary and cultural landscape you are not yet familiar with, it's much more amazing when you see walking down the street someone who weeks previous had pointed out that your shoelaces were untied in the metro.

Last week was the third and last week of finals. I was embarrassingly late to my last final after I spent too much time in the worst congested metro station in the world, barking up the wrong street, and backtracking my way to the correct street.

My flatmate, Katya, has already left for her new year's shindig in Finland. Monday I hand off my keys to Natasha who'll house sit for us while we're gone, and on Tuesday I meet up with Oksana to start our way to Kharkiv to join Kirill and from there we lazily make our way through Ukraine to celebrate the new year.

Happy new years and see you next year!

Good news is : we don't have cockroaches...

Last week I took my Russian final, as I finished each page, she took it from me (I was the only student in the class) and graded it on the spot. I took it as a good sign when she continually said "wonderful, splendid!" and even before she was done grading she said something about a "true A". My knot theory final went just as well. Out of six questions, I answered perfectly 5 1/2. I finished the exam in record time and left to go celebrate the new snow fall. I later found out from the other students that Prof. Sossinski started to grade my final right after I left and was laughing for most of the time... I was a little concerned about his reaction to my exam, until I learned that I had also earned a "true A" on it. Not everything that starts well ends well, however. Next week I have my most difficult finals, for which I'm frantically scrounging what notes I took, from when I happened to go to class, and I'm completing the homeworks that I didn't do during the semester (most of them). Wish me luck!