Today has been a fairly normal day, with a few exceptions. The normal will come first. We spent a considerable amount of time talking about money and tipping in class today, which is actually quite interesting. Evidently, Russians don't like to make change and a lot of us have been getting very nasty looks when we pay, for example, with a 500p bill for something that costs 257р. Just as in America, they prefer you to give them 507p, and then they can give you the easier change of 250p, which uses three bills, instead of 243p, which requires six bills and two coins. However, it's hardly our fault. One girl in the group had a bill of 800.13 (800 rubles and 13 kopeks). For those of you that don't know, one dollar is about 30 rubles, making Russian money a little like Monopoly money - especially when it comes to kopeks. So, it's a little ridiculous that the store would even worry about 13 kopeks (about half a cent), but in her case they wanted her to give exact change.
Now, personally, I wouldn't have minded giving an extra ruble (coin) if I had one and telling them to keep the change (because it's quite a hassle to keep up with kopek coins - they're half the diameter of our penny and probably cost many times more than they're worth to mint), but in this person's case, she didn't have a one ruble coin, so she paid with a 1000p note. In America, this might have drawn the question, "Do have an extra dollar/quarter/etc . . ." but here, it just draws you a nasty look. The other problem is that all the ATMs give 1000p notes, so it's actually necessary to go into the bank and exchange the money for smaller bills, since paying with 1000p is also very frowned upon anyway in almost every situation. Tipping complicates this because often, your waiter will just take your money and pocket the change, so when paying with cash, you have to make sure you don't give more than you're willing to give as the tip.
I would like to take this opportunity to write about some of the other things I've seen here in Moscow that would never happen in America. For instance, this morning in the crosswalk under Leninskij prospekt I saw a homeless guy playing the accordion. If I had any coins with me, I would have emptied my pockets for this guy, he was that amazing, and if you've been reading, he wasn't the first excellent musician I've seen in one of the crosswalks.
As I'm writing this I'm also watching TV. There was just a commercial for a Raid product (the insect repellent/killer) that you plug in next to your bed to keep bedbugs away.
There is also a large number of stray dogs here. I knew that was the case before coming, but I didn't really take it seriously until I got here. They aren't (usually) combative or unfriendly, in fact, it's quite the opposite. They usually just look like miserable, lonely, mangy creatures, but they can be very well behaved. When we went to get cellphones, there was one sitting at the entrance to the store. It didn't make eye contact and look at people with "the eyes." It actually behaved quite like the people here do - observant, but in that distant way that makes the eyes look cloudy. I'm still a little uncomfortable around them simply because I don't know what they're going to do if they're walking towards me, but so far I can just ignore them and they keep doing their thing.
Today for lunch we ate at a real Russian place (and yesterday too). Chains, but real Russian food nonetheless (probably equivalent to places like Applebees and Golden Corral in America). Today it was Ёлки-Палки, where I attempted to order a Russian beef stew and others ordered various pirozhki. After about five minutes, the waitress came out to tell us that they were out of the flavors of pirozhki that some people ordered. About ten minutes later, the same thing occurred - leaving them with the choice of just pirozhki with meat, or pirozhki with apple. Next, people's food started coming out one plate at a time; not a big deal, it's always better to have fresh, hot food than cold food that's been sitting out for a while. However, I was stuck sitting there watching the food come out, watching people eat, watching people finish eating, even watching people start to pay. But of course, still no food for me. It was at this point that we were finally informed that the beef stew I had ordered had also "run out" and that I would have to change the order, so although I was on the point of cancelling the order entirely, I ordered the safe and quick pel'meni . . . which still took about twenty minutes to arrive. So after our conversation this morning about change and tipping, we decided we would get a little revenge by paying the last few rubles of our nearly 1500p bill with one ruble coins and an assortment of kopeks.
There's more I could say, but I don't feel like typing anymore (I need to limit my English usage), so I'll probably do another one of these as I get more of the stranger things to write about.
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