1. The light switches are higher on the wall than in America. Took a little getting used to. And they are outside the door of the bathroom instead of on the wall inside the bathroom.
2. People wear their wedding bands on the right hand.
3. Aeroflot stewardesses. They are dressed in wonderful uniforms and are all beautiful. Kind of like America in the 60’s.
4. People applaud when an Aeroflot flight lands. Are they happy to survive? Not sure why but it’s cool.
5. You have a little key fob that you wave over a thingie by the door to your apartment building and the door buzzes and let’s you in. The sound of those door chimes/buzzers will always remind us of Russia.
6. Car alarms. Car alarms go off all night. One night we had a lightning storm and the thunder would set off all the car alarms. Once a car with a very loud stereo went down the street and car alarms went off as it passed.
7. No skim milk. Just 2.5, 3.5 and 4.5. We did get 1.5 after we had been here a while. And a lot of the milk is not stored in the refrigerator section at the store – it is packaged and has a pull date of four or five months after you buy it. Tastes okay, though.
8. Everyone takes off their shoes in the foyer of apartments. You walk around in your socks…we have slippers we wear around our apartment.
9. Half the time the hot and cold water faucets handles are backwards.
10. Lots of people have bad teeth…and a lot of people have gold teeth.
11. Calendars start on Monday.
12. There are a LOT of holidays and almost all of them are in the first part of the year. The first ten days of January are holidays. Then there is Victory Day and Russia Day and Women’s Day…the list goes on and on.
13. The sidewalks are very uneven…we have to watch where we are walking or we trip or fall in holes. We have both fallen a few times…sometimes on the ice and sometimes tripping on the sidewalk. The sidewalks have 4 or 5 inches of ice on them during the winter…we have learned to slide our feet like we are ice skating. Sherry puts her arm through mine and we slowly walk down the sidewalk together in the winter. I like it.
14. The sidewalk curbs are painted – a few feet white and then a few feet black. There are groups of men and women who have plastic buckets of thick, oil-based paint and little paintbrushes that go all through town painting the curbs every spring. There are no “wet paint” signs anywhere – you just learn to be observant.
15. Trees are painted, too. The bottom four feet of trees are painted white all through town…again, people with buckets of white paint and little brushes walk around painting tree trunks every spring.
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