You know you’re in Russia…

– when it snows just as hard some days in April as it did in February

– when you’re sitting on the toilet and suddenly you hear a loud rumbling noise and it starts shaking and squirting water everywhere

– when one day you’re sitting around and a panel in the wall concealing all the pipes just falls out of place

– when you’ve learned how to tell the difference between the real police and the student police, and the student police look like they’re 12 sometimes

– when you go to the store to buy a backpack for 1900 rubles, then the lady says something to you really fast, and all you understand is something about -do this and you’ll get a discount, so you say “da” yes. then she brings you a very odd squishy ball with spikes and puts it in your bag. she rings up your total, and it comes out to be 1500 rubles. so you pay but you’re still standing there thinking “what in the world just happened?!”

– when you eat a McDonald’s and have to say things like “cheeseburger”, “Big Tasty”, “chicken burger”, and “Sprite” in a Russian accent because otherwise they won’t understand, even though it’s the same word…

– when you’re sitting on a bus and a girl gets on with a gullet (girl mullet), and she’s carrying a tiny dog wearing a jogging suit (let me mention that this is not even close to the first time i’ve seen tiny dogs in shiny jogging suits here)

– when every Pizza Hut is a hot bed of PDA… not just making out, but some of the most intense gazing into each other’s eyes’ i’ve ever seen

– when you don’t really ever see children, middle aged women, or old men…

– when vodka is cheaper than almost any other beverage and it has more aisles in the grocery store devoted to it than all the other liquids combined

this place is so crazy sometimes. i get a lot of good laughs.

(posted from laureninrussia.blogspot.com)