Everyone here speaks Russian and only Russian. I speak conversational Russian, so I help translate what the Russians say for my American friends and tell the Russians what the Americans want! I love this role, though, since everyone here loves to talk to an American who knows Russian. My knowledge of the language has given me a lot of respect. Almost anybody on the street is willing to help me or even in one case, take me to a fireworks show, when they find out I speak Russian!
In Russia they use rubles, which I find very interesting. Everything seems very expensive here— for example, the meal I just bought cost 220 rubles— but that is only $3.50 dollars! They have pennies, nickles, and quarters for rubles, too, called kopeks but nobody uses them because you would need 100 to be about equal to one penny in America!
One bottle of water (which is very important here because you cannot drink the water from the sink) can cost as little as 40 rubles, or $0.60 cents, for a large bottle! Everything is cheaper here except for televisions, phones, and Starbucks coffee. Even a fancy meal downtown only costs $14. You can get a meal at the McDonald's (МкДоналдс) here for $3 and almost everything on the menu is different.
