My first post is about cultural differences between Russia and the US. The other night I was coming back from work on the metro. I usually take the elevator out of the metro to the street since it "drops" me off closer to where I need to go (i.e. home). Usually, people nicely line up in front of the elevator since it can only hold a certain number of people. On that night, I was the first in line for the elevator, with about 4 other people lining up behind me. Then, all of a sudden, this man walks up to the elevator door, right past me, and becomes the first in line. Of course, everyone in the line is shocked and starts looking at each other. When I mouthed to the others, "Should we say something?", everyone started shaking their heads, saying, "No, no." This is where I realized that this is America: people are so nice that they will not reprimand a common-law breaker. On the contrast, Russians do not let things like that go...perhaps, because we are used to standing in line, but we never let people get in front of us in a line without a good exuse (i.e. pregnant, disabled, etc). Had this situation occurred in Russia, this man would have been booed out to the back of the line. But, only in America, rule breakers just get scorning looks. I love this country.
