The end of the first semester of my study abroad program involved entirely too much pomp and circumstance and officality for my tastes. My opinion of the closing ceremony was more along the lines of these folks, who all seem to look like they are having a lot of fun:



Taking turns waiting for the oral final exam for Conversation:






The last night of the first semester was basically us all just going out to the bars. It was a night in which I kind of sat around with cheap shitty beer while people around me burst into tears and accused me of being unfeeling when I just stared blankly at them. Yeah, I guess. Or maybe the breaking of artificial attachments four months in the making was just not enough to evoke the waterworks from me. Call me crazy.







We were in this bar at like 3AM and managed to break two glasses in twenty minutes. The beauty of Russian winters is that it is dark basically all the time, and when the bars close so late that I was never actually in one of them long enough to see closing time, and you're walking distance from your apartment, well, why not be out all night?