classes

At Volgu, all classes were in one building. This was quite a change from Mansfield, which has several classroom buildings. There were 4-5 floors in the building, which had classrooms, the stolovaya (cafeteria), library, computer labs, little food shops, and an ATM machine.
There were no elevators and the bathrooms had no soap or toilet paper. I learned quickly to bring tissues and hand sanitizer with me to class every day, or just “hold it” until I got back to the dormitory.
Anyway, Cody Ryan and I had all the same classes. We had 1-2 per day and they were about 90-minutes long. We had some classes with students from Kent State University in Ohio and a couple of girls from Belgium. The majority of our classes were in English, with the exception of phonetics, in which I was completely lost in from day one. This was my least favorite course.
We also took two Language courses, I felt like I was in high school Spanish class all over again, where it took me 2-3 hours a night to study vocabulary, and to this day I do not understand verb conjugations, in any language.
We had a political science course with Professor whose nickname was Misha. I thought that he was British when we first met, because he had a flawless accent. It wasn’t until after I learned his name that I figured out that he wasn’t. Great guy, with a Monty python- esque sense of humor. This was my favorite class.
We also took classes in history multi-cultural literature and geography. Our course load totaled about six or seven classes. The credits actually transferred back to Mansfield, and we got to choose the equivalents to MU classes. I already had my language requirements met before I went over, but as a result of going to Russia, I have double the credits for it. If I would have known that I’d be doing this back in high school, I would have saved myself the misery of taking an AP Spanish class.

main campus building from my dorm room window.