My new life in Kursk

“Zdras-tvui-tyeh”(hello) everybody! Finally I have arrived at Kursk and never before had I travelled to such far places in my life. It took me about 20 hour’s time in all travelling from Malaysia to Kursk. I was wondering whether I’d chosen the right way of spending my next 6 years in Russia to study medicine. Anyway God has brought me here and wants me to learn something new but of course, this is my own decision. Being here at Kursk is really far from home and everything is new for me because they can hardly speak English. So we would be having troubles in communicating with local people especially when shopping or taking a bus. So we have to learn their language in order to survive. When the 1^st day we arrived, I’d already expected how the hostel will be and I’d been arranged to stay with girls on the same floor whereas guys would be staying at ground floor and here I met back my old classmate, Alexander, my old friend, Stephanie and some La Sallian as well. Since most of them did their pre-med in Malaysia and only some like me did STPM, I have to try my best to get to know them as we would need to form a class group of 12 soon. Luckily they are friendly and the good thing is that most of them are Sabahan. But there are lots of Indian here.. haha~~

After I settled down all my stuffs, we were brought to our uni which was about 20-25 mins walk from our hostel. We also need to do our own cooking, so there’s a lot of things to buy like heater, water filter, adapter, Russian sim card, winter clothing &medical courts, cooking utensils, mineral water etc. Owing to high calcium contents in the water, we have to filter the water before consuming but nothing is 100%.. so it’s advisable to buy or order mineral water outside. Besides, some food like “lap-cheong” or Malaysian curry-source cannot be found here and one hanger can costs up to few ringgits. So we have to bring them from Malaysia.

Kursk is very big that all of the buildings are far apart from one another but there’s no tall building here. All fast food restaurant like MacD., KFC is not available yet in Kursk and there’s also no English movies at cinema. Lol.. Thus we prefer self-cooking rather than eating outside which is more costly. Russian people are not friendly. They cannot stand people who are noisy. They hate people blocking their way as they walk super fast. They hate people eating while walking. If you’ve done one of these that I mentioned, they will shout at you in russian or just push you aside to show their anger. They like spitting around so you shouldn’t ever walk close to them.

We also have entrance exam (Bio,Chem,Eng) for all the new students. I am taking Bio, Chem, Biophysic, Anatomy, Russian etc and would be very busy in my studies. The 1^st 3 years will be pre-clinical where we are spending most of our time in class and the next 3 years will be clinical where we have to start attending to the Russian patients. My class starts on 15 of October so now I am very free to do what I want to like shopping and sleeping.. haha

I hope I can adapt to it as fast as possible as this will be my second home for my next 6 years life in Kursk. “Da-svi-da-ni-nya”(bb)