Visa Situation

... is resolved. My sister and I got our visas today. So, England, here we come. I am so excited. I have a 6 months multiple entry visa to UK. Since Matt will be there in February, which is only a couple of months away, I will be able to visit him virtually right away. This visa news is the best news I have received in a quite a few weeks, because it means that I will be able to see my husband more often :)

So, now that we go the visas, Matt got hit pretty hard. Not only did he buy me a ticket from Moscow to London with his miles, but he also ended up buying my sister a ticket with miles as well. Don't take me wrong, she can afford it, but she was going to use her own miles, and the day before we got our visas all the seats that could be purchased with miles through her company were sold out, and she did not want to pay $650 per ticket just to get to London (not that I blame her). So, Matt was very generous and sacrificed some of his miles to ensure that 2 (out of 4) my mostly loved people are with me during New Years. My husband rocks!!! I keep telling him that, but he says that he knows that already :) So, I figured I would tell that to others, you (my dear readers) just might now how much my husband rocks, but he is absolutely wonderful. I lucked out!!! I don't say that he rocks only because he forked up some miles for my sister, but also when my sister told him that she would get him a present for such a gesture and asked what he would like, you know what he replied? Well, I am going to quote here "I don't need any presents beyond my wifes company :) and maybe her happiness" Not many guys would behave the same. I got a good guy on my side, what can I tell. My happiness and presence to him is much more important than anything material you have to offer.

Yeah, we are going to be in London, Dec. 27 through January 5 (Matt will be leaving on Jan. 2), Jan 2 through Jan 5 my sister, our mutual friend and I will be in Manchaster, and then Jan 5 we will be back home in Moscow to recoop and get ready for work on January 9 :) I have a feeling this is going to be the best trip ever!!! Sorry, not ever. Miami trip was a bit better :) Not only Matt took me to Miami in the middle of the winter, which is a real treat, but he also surprised me there with a marriage proposal.


I am counting days till London, so does Matt. He informed me this early evening that we have 27 days left. I am so excited!!! My first trip to Europe and with my loved ones :)

Some things just never change

Lots have changed in my life so far, but some things never change. Well, there are very few things that stayed the same, but still they do exist. First of all, I am still drinking wine on a regular basis. I wasn't for about a month. I think it's because work was slow and I was low on money. Now, work is crazy busy, I can hardly keep up, and money is no longer an issue, so hello wine :) You know, I am a much happier person in the evening when I have some wine at home (go figure). I mean I only have a glass (at most two), but that makes a world of difference, I just feel like all these changes in life are temporary (me being in Russia, missing Matt, etc)

But besides wine there are other things. First, my relationship with Matt hasn't changed, not that I expected it to, but I was worried a little bit in the beginning. I mean, yeah we are apart and all, but we still talk every day, and we are still the same, at least it does not feel like we are growing apart at all.

One more thing: Matt gives me just as much grief for me being stubborn, difficult and loud as he has before :) I have a feeling that this will never change :) But don't take me wrong, I don't want it to change either. He is a challenger, by that I mean that he challenges me and can also be challenging :)

Oh, I know, one more: I still like to sleep. What a shocker huh? And I still drink lots of pepsi :) And spend lots of money that I can't figure out what I spend it on. Ok, I think this list is complete now :) Although I am sure that I will come up with lots more things that never seem to change as soon as I post this blog. And, no I will not add to this blog, I hate editting to blogs after posting them. Absolutely against such actions!!!

PS: I am in a great mood, have no clue why, just am (and there was no wine involved this evening, yet :))

PPS: Oh, one last thing, even though I am all the way in Russia, I still manage to find reasons to take advantage of my husband's frequent flyer's miles. He is a great sport when it comes to that, he lets me use quite a few of those. I am glad he works for Deloitte, I have yet to pay for a ticket (ok, the ticket to Russia was bought by Matt, but besides that it's all been ff miles)

Keep your fingers crossed

My sister and I had a plan for this morning. We were going to get up at 7 am get ready and be at the British Visa Application Center (BVAC) by 9 am as soon as it opens. Well, our plan did not work quite as we had planned it. I did not get up till shortly before 8 am, and we did not get to the BVAC till about 10 am, but that is ok. The BVAC actually is pretty nice inside. You don't have to wait outside which is great. They have a very comfy area inside the building where you can wait your turn to give them your application, passport and a bit of your money :) We were there for only 20 minutes really. Tomorrow we have to go to a different place, an actually British Embassy and have to get our digital pictures taken there and they need our fignerprints. After that we are supposed to call them after a couple of days to check on our visa application status. The calls to the BVAC are not free, it costs us $3.00/minute to talk to them and see if our visa application is processed. I just hope that they are not going to put us on hold when we call :) That would be a very easy way for them to make some decent money. They also don't tell you on the phone if you are granted a visa or not. They just politely tell you to come and get your documents. So, after that we will have to make a third trip back to pick up our documents. At that point we will open the passport and see if we have a visa or not.

So, I am keeping my fingers crossed that we will get a visa to go to England, because that would be great. It would be my first visit to Europe and I will get to spend some time with Matt the Hat :)

England

Most of you might know by now that Matt and I are planning to meet up in London for New Years. Well, it's still just a plan, because I have yet to get a visa. I am going to the UK embassy on Monday and hope they will grant me a visa so I can see my husband for New Years.

Well, it looks like I will be visiting England quite often this coming year. First off, I will start my year there, then Matt just recently found out that he is going to be on a different project. His project is going to be in England, about an hour away from London. He will have a corporate apartment and a car, which will make my visits very cheap on my side :)

Of course I am super happy that I will be much closer to Matt. The flight is only 3.5 hours away from Moscow, and the tickets are much less expensive than those to the US. I am hoping that I will get to see Matt at least once a month when he is in England, and possibly more often :)

I am sure we will end up traveling quite a bit around Europe during his 10 months in England. I mean we might as well, I am sure we will get sick of being in England every time I come to visit.

I am excited for Matt to be on a project in England, I think he is excited too :)

Classmates

I have had 30 classmates from 1 through 11 grade in Russia. All the same people, throughout all those years. Some people/kids did move out of the city/went to a different school, some came into our class, but there were very few of them. So, I know my classmates pretty well. Some of them I could not stand and vice versa, we all knew about it. Some of them were my close friends for awhile. Well, my class certainly left me many memories of school and my classmates.

We all know that in the states there is a website where the classmates can find each other: classmates.com. Well, in Russian classmates are called odnoklassniki. So, you guessed it. We have a website: www.odnoklassniki.ru

I accidentally found 1 of my classmate in the US. He happens to work at Deloitte as well (just like Matt). Actually, he found me, he found out my address at the class reunion (he lives in Chicago, but was in Russia for class reunion last year) and found out my address from one of the teachers I correspond with. So, when he wrote me a letter, he gave me his email and then in his email letters he told me to about this odnoklassniki.ru I registered there and found quite a few of my old classmates. It's really weird. I haven't talked to them in at least 7 years. And here I find like 13 of them. It does not seem like a lot, but it's over a third of my class that I haven't talked to in ages.

Anyway, some of them live in Moscow, so 4 of us are meeting this Friday for sushi (I think, unless we change our mind and pick some other restaurant). So, I am super excited. It's funny that one of the girls that is going to be there, well, she and I really did not get along. But now that we got older a little it does not seem to bother either of us that we were nasty to each other.

I find it cool that I will get to see people I spent so many years of my life, so many days of my life sitting in the same room with them and listening to the same teachers. I am looking forward to this Friday night. I think I will have fun. I just have to make sure I don't drink too much :) I haven't been the most disciplined person about that lately. Oops.

Who knew?

That you need to reformat your digital camera memory card? Well, apparently just about everybody but me :) Anyway, my card has been acting funny lately. I would take pictures, and then when I would turn the camera into the view mode, I could not see many pictures, the stupid camera told me that the picture is not readable or something silly like that. But when I hooked the camera to a computer and downloaded all the photos, they were all just fine.

Well, I guess you are supposed to clean out the card and reformat it about once every couple of months, I guess it's very good for the card (that is what I have been told). So, today I finally got to that stage, where I downloaded all the pictures off the card, and reformatted. Can't really tell you that it's all better. Won't know until I take about 100 pictures or so, but I am hoping that it is all fixed. I learn something new everyday :) Had my camera for almost 2 years (in December) and this is my first time I reformat my card :)

Taganrog

Last weekend I got to go to my hometown, Taganrog. I got to see my folks, eat my mom's yummy food and sleep till 12pm. It was great. I need to go visit them more often. My sister, Kara, flew in with me, although my folks did not know that she was coming. We decided to surprise them. They were surprised all right. My sister's best friend, Vitya, came with us too. My parents know him very well, in fact he is kind of like a brother to us.

Kara and I had another surprise in store for my folks. We bought them a laptop. Well, we ordered it through Matt, he hauled it to Russia all the way from the states (it's much cheaper to get a laptop in the US than it is here). My mom was super happy. Now she will be able to write emails to me and my sister, look at pictures in the Internet (mostly Matt's site or Kara's), watch DVDs (they don't have a DVD player, so it would be a nice bonus). Vitya took that laptop to install a Russian version of Windows so my mom can read everything in Russian.

My sister, Vitya and I went out one night, drank a lot of wine, some beer and then champagne, Kara's friends were with us. That night was great. It was nice to relax and just have fun.

Well, the last weekend was interesting. I had lots of feelings/emotions left over from it. It was memorable to say the least :) I need to relax more (that does not mean drinking necessarily, I just need to get away with friends more often).

So, that was my weekend. I enjoyed it very much. Now I am back to reality and lots and lots of work. Oh, well, such is life.

I feel sorry for my husband...

...because he gets to put up with me. No, really, I don't know where he gets all the patience and love for me. I can be quite a witch sometimes. He just does not stop to amaze me with his love and dedication.

Even though I feel sorry for him, on the other hand I know that he is happy with me, which is the best feeling a woman can ever have!!! At least it's the best feeling I can have, because knowing that I am loved and that my love changes his life (for the better I hope :)) means the world to me.

So, baby, thanks for putting up with me. Thanks for flying half the world to spend 50 hours with me. Thanks for all your non-stop attention and understanding. You are one treasure I will never let go of :)

You rock my world!!!

Maroon 5

I love that band. Lots of people ask me what kind of music I like, and honestly I don't have a particular style I like, I just listen to whatever happens to be on the radio and then I decide whether I like it or not. Well, Maroon 5 I like a lot. That is one band that I like the majority of their songs. Usually, I like a few songs of singers'/bands' albums. Maroon 5 is a totally different story. I can listen to them for a long time before I get tired of them, and I like 90% of their songs.

You know how sometimes when you listen to a song you all of a sudden relive what happened in your life when you first heard the song or listened to that particular album. I don't get that very often, but it happens every time I listen to Maroon 5. If I am in a bad mood, listening to their songs usually cheers me up. Weird huh? Anyway, I particularly like their last album (not that they had many of the albums, but still the last one is my favorite).

I am not a big fan of music. I can live without it. I don't have an iPod or MP3 player, not because I can't afford it, but because I don't like listening to music when I am walking anywhere. But I do like listening to music at home after work, and for that I have a stereo that I turn up pretty loud when I am all alone in my apartment.

If you can't tell, I am very happy right now. Don't know why. Had a great day at work, having a great day at home, just love my life :)

68

Hmm, there should be a show on TV that is called 68. You know, like the one that is 24. My show would be 68. Why 68? Why am I thinking of this number? Well, that's easy. My husband lands in Moscow airport in 68 hours. I am super excited. He is flying in on Friday night at 5:25pm. I work till 6 pm, but I am going to leave a little bit earlier so I can be there as soon as I can.

I haven't seen Matt in about 6 weeks, the longest we have gone without seeing each other. Sure we talk every day, sometimes we talk in the morning and then chat at night again, but still it's not the same as being close to each other. It's going to be our six months anniversary when he will be here. We get to celebrate. We are going to a restaurant "Lubyanka" that during Soviet Union was open only to members of KGB. Now, it's opened for public, but it kept the same atmosphere as it had back in the Soviet era. It's a bit expensive, but I know that my husband will like it and I am positive it will be the most romantic evening we have had in a while (even though we will be dining in the former KGB restaurant).

Meanwhile, Matt and I are both counting hours :) I have a feeling I won't be writing any blogs this coming weekend. Sorry journal (and its readers) I will be pre-occupied with pinching my hubby, cuddling with him and just being difficult (he likes when I am difficult and high maintenance, even though sometimes he denies it :))

PS: If there was a show 68, have no clue what it would be about, but still think that there ought to be a show 68, it's way more mysterious than 24. After all, what is 68? It's not 12 or 24 or 365 (all know what these numbers represent), but 68? Hmm, might be a good mystery show :)

Subway...familiar faces

Yes, Moscow is HUGE. The population here is about 15 million people, those that are here officially, registered that is. Unofficially there is another 10 here, those are people like me who live and work in Moscow, but don't own an apartment, and therefore registered in another city (in my case I am registered in Taganrog, although I haven't been there in at least 3 years). So, you get the picture, in Moscow it's virtually impossible to meet a familiar face on the street. Yet, subway is a totally different story. I see familiar faces every day. No, I don't know these people, but I ride subway with them, and I am starting to recognize some of them. Every morning at 7:30 am when I get on the subway I notice at least 2 similar faces. I find it a little weird that these people and I most likely have nothing in common, we don't know each other and our lives have very different paths, yet every morning we have one thing in common for about 40 minutes--a ride on the same subway, in the same train car.

We are all the same. People are all the same, really. Some are old, some are unhappy, others angry, yet we all have something in common. It might be a small thing that does not mean much, but we all have something in common. I was just sitting on the subway this morning and thinking: strange, I might not know these people, but if something happens in the subway these strangers just might be the last people I see in my life (there were a few incidents of explosions/bombs in the subway a few years back when we were at war with Chechneya). No, I wasn't sad, just thinking that's all. Anyway, the point of this blog is that I find it amazing that with so many people in Moscow and trains that go every 40 seconds in the subway that I still find familiar faces early in the morning.

LOST

No, I did not get lost today. And no, I don't feel lost in life or anything like that. Actually the title of this blog has something to do with the show on TV. I always thought that it was lame to watch all the new shows that come out on TV, and actually always considered it lame to watch much TV at all. But honestly, lately I have had a very different social life in Russia, so I have started watching Heroes and now I am onto LOST. I love hearing English in the shows, and that is part of the reason why I have been trying to watch anything that has English in it (movies, shows). So, this week my roommate brought 5 discs of LOST home. I was a little skeptical about this show, but I thought I would give it a shot.

I guess I like it, but honestly I don't think it's anything super special. Between Heroes, Lost and House (about the only shows I have seen) I like House the best. I did not mind Heroes, and LOST is ok, but honestly I don't feel like I have to watch it. In fact, I stop the shows sometimes in the middle of the episode because I get bored and lose the interest. I get like that with watching TV, the reason I can't watch too much of it is because after awhile it bores me. Anyway, now I am moved onto LOST. It does keep me busy during the day when I don't have any plans, but I am anxious to find another show like House. That is the only show that I have watched till 3 am just to finish the disc and that I could rewatch a couple of times :)