Serious Guns

I went to the mall yesterday in my attempt to fit in with the culture here.  If someone looks only slightly different, people will stare for long, long, long periods of time.  For example, I have some white sneakers.  Russians don't wear sneakers.  Every time I wear these shoes, I can see people eyes start at my face and gaze all the way down to my shoes and just stare at the shoes.  So I went to the mall; I don't like being stared at.  

The mall (called "Grand Canyon") was very large.  It was about 80% female clothing/shoe stores.  All of the female clothing stores basically sold the same exact styles in the same price range.  There were many shoe stores also.  But every shoe store had the same exact shoes as the last store, which slight variances in price.  Now I know how Russians all get to look the same.  

Leaving the mall I saw a little market set up by the metro.  People were selling used socks, pantyhose, underwear, clothes.  There were also fake guns, tools, and a lot of mushrooms.  I tried to buy a large t-shirt that said 'River Rafting' with weird 80s cartoons, but the woman wouldn't bargain with me.

I did end up buying a pair of shoes at a store.  However, in order to buy the shoes I needed to show my passport.  Russians have two types of passports.  An internal passport used within the country and an external passport used when they travel around the world.  Russians need to carry their internal passport on them every single day (as the police can stop them at any time and "request" to see their documents).  In this passport it has all types of information.  The town you were born, where you work, name and age of spouse, name and ages of children, everything.  As a foreigner I am no exception and am required to keep my passport on me at all times.  

Today on my way to school I saw a large group of soldiers from Somali walking down the street.  I saw them last week also.  Near where my bus picks me up I also saw another van.  Hiding inside of the van was a man with an AK-47 looking quite the mafia type.  Regular criminals on the street don't have guns here.  But when someone has a gun, it's a Serious Gun.  

In my attempt to stay safe, I have decided to use my hand sanitizer spray as a pseudo mace.  Yesterday a man was definately following me.  I decided to take my hand sanitizer out and swing it from my hand to try to make it look like mace.  I think it worked because he backed off after he thought I had mace.  

I'm being safe, I promise.