Kazan

I arrived in Kazan on Wednesday after three flights and running through the Moscow airport to get through customs and make the flight to Kazan. Kazan is about 500 miles from Moscow on the Volga River in central Russia. Kazan is the capital of Tatarstan and is a city of about 1.2 million people so it is little bit bigger than Riga. The city is approximately 50 percent Russian and 50 percent Muslim Tatar. The street signs are in Russian and Tatar but most of the language you hear on the street is Russian. We spent the first couple days acclimating to our host families and the city and taking language exams at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities where we will have our language classes. So far the city is beautiful and below is a picture of the Kremlin which we will visit on Tuesday.