arrival

waiting on a taxi driver to call us back about visiting sex workers. it's taking a while, and i've exhausted hanging out online and checking facebook yet again, so i'll write some.
so i arrived, safely, in moscow. the flight over was uneventful, if you don't count my neighbor. i prefer window seats: one can escape by staring out of them and you have more space since you can lean towards the wall. my neighbor on the flight over the ocean looked strikingly like putin and immediately decided, for some reason, that i was interested in having a conversation. what about me screams: talk to me? i'm not a nice person, sometimes i make fun of people, wtf? so even before take off, we, correction he, spent an hour talking about airplanes, flights of the concord, and internal combustion engine (ours was not going to internally combust). then, we talked about berries in general and some obscure siberian ones in particular (his favorite are gooseberries) and he offered to buy us drinks since cheap-ass united airlines no longer serve booze. then he offered to let me watch russian cartoons on his mini non-apple ipod because no amount of staring out of window detered him from saying things. i think he was convinced i was flying home or something, so when visa declarations were passed out to foreigners, he was surprised i didn't have a russian passport. 'oh you can apply for one." i tried to come up with some metaphor for how if i were to apply for a russian passport it would be the same as him applying for a portuguese one, but he didn't get it. only at the end of the flight, right before we landed, as he, for some reason, showed me pictures of himself skiing, he asked me how many times i've been to russia. "umm never?" i think he was confused. an old lady in a kerchief sat across the aisle from me and i sort of panicked when she first sat down because i figured she might stroke out mid-air and i'd have to do something to rescucitate her. likely, she made it over, but she did get smacked on the head by her daughter in efforts to lower her seat.
before we were let off the plane, two bulky russian women passed through the cabin and took everyone's temperature with a device that was pointed at each person's head. this was done, i'm guessing, for swine-flu prophylaxis, but those things hardly looked safe, so hopefully i did not get a russian secret spy chip implanted in me or was not radiated with left-over chernobyl waste. the ride from the airport took 2 hours in crazy traffic, we drove over tram tracks at some point. the driver smelled like bad bo and i had to hold back bursts of laughter as i thought of the seinfeld smelly car episode. "it's BO!" but he was very nice and even let me use his cell phone to call the M3 (from now on she will be known as Adya...because that's her name). after hanging out in the office and meeting 'the team' (djonbek the 29 yo econ grad and beautiful and super skinny 20 yo Farzona (she thinks she is fat)) we walked around moscow. (i'll attach pics shortly). got home late and after going over interviews i passed out only to wake up shortly (redundant!) to find the spring of the mattress dug into my hip--no more sleeping on the side. now, if only prostitutes would call back...