It's been a while...

OK. I have finally made contact to the Russian Consulate and learned what I need for my student visa. The key piece of which is the official invitation from the Russian university, which I have recently learned is in the works. Apparently the university assembles your information and then sends a visa request form to the Russian immigration service who produces the invitation and decides on the candidate's visa dates and validity-or something like that. I have also learned that the semester lasts from September 1 through December 30, and though I haven't yet learned the dates in which my visa will be valid, I purchased my plane tickets; I figured that in the event the visa dates are somehow more exclusive than my tickets, the airline's $200 reschedule fee will be cheaper than the tickets by the time the Russians get back to me with dates (the tickets seem to go up in price weekly, in the last week they went up $50). If my dates hold, I will fly out of CVG (Cincy) on American Airlines at 3:00pm Thursday Aug 28 and land at DME Domodedovo airport in Moscow at about noon on Friday Aug 29. Coming home I'll leave Moscow about noon on Saturday January 3 and arrive home at about 11:30 that night. Each way I have a single stop in Chicago; on the way I have a 2 hour layover, but on the way back it is nearly 5 hours. So with the purchase of the tickets, and their nonrefundable nature, it means that no matter what I'll be going to Russia this year-even if for some crazy reason I don't get to go for school, I'll change the ticket dates and go on a tourist visa for a week or two.

Additionally, I have sold my Triumph, meaning that my insurance costs will go down, I have a spot in the garage for my car, and I got enough money out of it to pay my car payment and other bills while I'm gone as well as cover a good portion of my plane ticket-so I'm looking alright money wise. Speaking of which, if any of you have extra cash on hand, idle, and itching to be spent, you can buy me an ipod touch. Those things are awesome, the wifi google maps would really come in handy in Moscow...