So what Russian experience would be complete without having to bribe officials? My mom sent me a package last week, and the Russian customs office decided to keep it...Yesterday was the most interesting in the debacle - after talking to someone in Russian and yelling at them to put someone on who spoke English (its DHL, I know they have English speakers there) I was hung up on by my customs agent. She did however send me an email explaining that I needed to pay about 300 dollars in fees - some of it was half of the value of the box, and then about 200 dollars just so that she would sign a paper letting my box out of customs. The director of my program helped me out a little, but we decided that it would end up costing about $500 to get it out, with all those 'extra' fees. Mike and I decided to go to the office to see if we could just show up and they would give it to us without knowing they weren't supposed to. We ended up lost in Northern Moscow, and then when we found it were told that it would take three days after I paid the money before I got it. Since I'm leaving in two, we told them to send it back.
Thats the simplified version of it, but apparently not an uncommon occurence, so yay for Russia.
Lets see - Monday and Tuesday we took the Russian language exam - I passed Level 1 !!!
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