Sweet and Sour Smoke

I hand the border control officer my passport while thinking, "I hope everything is fine on that visa, because I can't handle taking a flight straight back to Germany right now." It's dark outside. Really dark. I can see a few stars through the clouds as the woman behind the glass scans my paperwork and visa, assuring herself that everything is in order. She hands it back to me, glares at me for good measure, and I walk off. "Russian hospitality, real nice," I murmur to myself. Walking into the concourse, I can see the Aeroflot jet that carried us from Frankfurt to Moscow through a window on my right. I hadn't realized how small it was until now. It's pathetic in comparison to the behemoth of a plane that bore us all from Chicago to Germany a matter of hours before.
After a few minutes' wait at the baggage claim, both of my bags arrive unscathed and apparently untampered with. I yank them both off of the conveyor belt and stand back out of the others' way. It doesn't take long before everyone has their bags except Travis. We wait, but not for long before Gulya arrives and hurries us away toward the exit of the airport. "What about my bags?" Travis asks in his Canadian accent, sounding to me as if he's asking about his "begs." Gulya assures him in a heavy Russian accent that his bags will surely show up soon, at which time she'll come fetch them. Within several days, this will present an interesting scenario for Travis, seeing as how the only clothes now in his possession are the orange pajama bottoms and the black hoody he's currently wearing.
Once outside, my senses are bombarded with the unexpected. The air is utterly frigid and oddly pungent. It reeks obviously of cigarette smoke, but this particular scent is extremely foreign. This new brand of cigarette smells sweetly sour and a bit tangy. I know I'll have to adjust quickly, because right now my olfactory nerve couldn't possibly be more irritated. Gulya leads us straight to a van and has us climb in, luggage and all. We've volunteered to come to Russia to teach English, and this van is the "schoolbus" for our school. Apparently, schoolbuses here aren't yellow. Instead they are gray, caked in murky-brown ice, and are actually large vans with rainbow-upholstered seating.
Our chauffeur races through Moscow's streets. Really racing. He swerves around other cars and slings us around corners. I memorized the Cyrillic alphabet on the flight over, but we fly past every neon sign too quickly before I can sound out any of the strange words. Within half an hour, we pull into the school's driveway. It looks more like a prison to me than anything else. There's a large fence surrounding the grounds and every window on the bottom floor is protected by threatening iron bars. "We'll be teaching and living in this building for the next six months? Great." I say. Gulya glances over, having misread my words for ill-favored sarcasm, and informs me that the principal of the school, Sergei, has turned several of the smallest classrooms on the top floor into apartments for our use.
Inside I'm reminded of an old warehouse. The walls are thick and whitewashed. The decor is simple and sparing, at best. All the doorways are wide and evenly spaced, just like the red-tiled hallways which they border. The school has one small elevator, for use "only by teachers and the final-year students." Luckily, we fall under the teacher category and pack the elevator. It crawls toward the sixth floor, creaking along the way. It groans to a stop, jerks, immediately drops six inches, and the doors finally open wide. Emily couldn't be less happy with the experience. "Whoa, they were NOT kidding when they said the elevator's not in the best shape. I am never stepping foot on this thing again!" I found the elevator ride less traumatic than she, so I make no such promise.
Travis and I wheel my bags to our "apartment," a small room with one window, two twin beds that are awkwardly pushed together, gray tile, and a single armoire made of sagging particle board. We trade questioning looks, and immediately pull the beds to opposite sides of the room without saying a word. Weird, but whatever. The walls in here are plain white, just like the rest of the building, and rough to the touch like sandpaper. I sit down, pull off my shoes, and investigate our floor of the school. Nextdoor to our apartment is the preparation and supply room for the English teachers, a room that would become our refuge from the rest of the city. The bathroom lies behind another door nearby and all the girls find themselves in similar "apartments" on the opposite end of the sixth floor.
It's been dark outside for many hours already, and it's only 8:00 in the evening here in Moscow. I walk back into my room, watch for a moment as Travis stares longingly at my intact luggage, and lie down on my bed. The wind and snow are blasting and howling against the thin window. I soon begin to doze off.