August 12 (Day 1): Arrival in Moscow

August 13, 2018

Hello! I’m Jessica, a senior at Harvard in Lowell House. Today’s blog post is relatively short:

Three of the bell ringers (Peter, Isabelle, and I) arrived safely today in Moscow. Peter, who got to Moscow in the morning, met with Father Roman for lunch and helped with ringing a peal during today’s service at Danilov Monastery. Later in the afternoon, I arrived (after a few weather delays and rebooked flights…) and was shortly followed by Isabelle.

In the evening, we ate dinner with Father Roman in the monastery – a meal that consisted of a nice spread of fish, salad, buckwheat, rice with vegetables, cottage cheese pancakes (syrniki), etc. After catching up with Father Roman and chatting about his recent travels, we made plans to join Father Roman tomorrow morning and returned to our hotel rooms.

Isabelle and I went into the city center for some exploration, mainly in Red Square. Here’s a picture of us in front of St. Basil’s:

(We’re both members of Harvard Club Swimming, if you couldn’t tell.)

As we continued walking, we made it to Arbat, the main shopping street in Moscow, where I was surprised to see a lot of chain stores like Krispy Kreme, Dunkin Donuts, Shake Shack, and Nike. We searched for a place to buy ice cream, ultimately settling for some partially melted ice cream from a street vendor’s cart.

We returned by Moscow’s beautiful, convenient Metro system. After long day(s) of traveling, we’re exhausted but satisfied with today’s events! Onto the next one.