Ruble Stretching

When I came to Russia, I brought money in two forms: cash and traveller's checks. This is my first experience in a while dealing with traveller's checks in a while, my last experience having been when I went to Israel on a Birthright trip five years ago. I made do with cash at the beginning as I figured it would be easier than dealing with the checks, which are not as easy to cash as they were in the days before credit cards were widely available.

Today, I came to the point of having to start using the checks. I went to Sberbank, a bank in Moscow I was assured would cash traveller's checks. At the exchange window, however, I was asked for my passport. I attempted to explain to the woman behind the counter that my passport is at registration (a common experience for tourists). The woman made clear that the photograph of my passport the school has given me until my passport is back would not be sufficient to cash a check.

I brought this problem to my school, explaining that I am at the point of needing money for food for the weekend. Administration is going to try to get my passport back temporarily--I will have to surrender it again around the 29th, and will have my passport and visa back on the 2nd of June. But this would at least enable me to get some rubles in my pocket today.

If my passport cannot be returned today, the school will make me a loan. But one way or another, I will do a lot of ruble stretching this weekend. It's time to start cooking at home more. There are only two impediments to my doing so--the first being that I have trouble deciphering labels in the grocery store, the other that the light in our kitchen does not work. As I've been getting home from lessons quite late this week, this makes it impossible to cook anything.

For the next week, though, I have very little scheduled. We are at the point where Russians start to take a holiday from language lessons. The Russian summer is short, and Russians don't want to waste any of it learning the difference between the present simple and the present continuous. I am scheduled for only six academic hours (4.5 clock hours) in the coming week. So I will have plenty of time to struggle with my laundry as well as see something more of Moscow.

On the agenda will be Red Square and the Kremlin, now that Victory Day is over and the Square is no longer blocked off. The rest I will make up as I go along.