Here I am

After nine hours sleeping in an upright position, we touched down in the frozen wilderness of Sheremetevo airport. I was surprised that the flight was so short. We flew over Newfoundland, and then the southern tip of Greenland, then over Iceland and Scandinavia! At 35,000 feet I could see the tundra/desert of backcountry Norway.
The first thing I noticed about Moscow was that there are flower shops everywhere. Between the airport and the hostel we must have passed seven of them.
In Moscow it was around noon; at home it was 4:00 am. Needless to say, we were (and still are) all exhausted.
My first hours were plagued with extreme depression and hopelessness. I am stuck in a 22 storey Soviet era dormitory, everything is in Russian, I don’t know anyone, and all there is to eat is microwaved spaghetti-beef and watery borscht. But, after a long nap and a cheery meeting with some friendly Russians, I was in high spirits.
Maxime, my roommate, is from France and speaks hardly any English and no Russian. I have resorted to using Google translator to communicate with him. In spite of the language barrier, we are getting along fine.