The Helpful Class Monitor

Wang Ye was chatting with Liu Xiaojie when the two girls nearby came over as well.

One was tall and one short, one plump and one thin.

Though he could not remember their names, Wang Ye still had some impression of them. They were both from his hometown too.

However, neither girl was particularly attractive. The short, plump one had been unable to endure the weather here and returned home before finishing preparatory school, while the tall, thin girl transferred to another school after graduating from the preparatory program. So Wang Ye was not especially familiar with either of them.

The tall, thin girl said with a smile, "I heard the dorms here are mixed-gender, and everyone will be living in this dormitory building."

Liu Xiaojie's face reddened slightly. It was hard to tell whether he was shy or simply overheated as he took his glasses off his nose again.

This time, though, he did not use his shirt to wipe them. Instead, he pulled out a pack of tissues from his pocket and cleaned the lenses.

He looked at the tall, thin girl and replied, "Actually, this is pretty good. We can all look after each other."

The short, plump girl looked around before suddenly saying, "Hey, that shop is still open, right? I want to buy some things. Brother Ye, come with me?"

Although they had all received the same language training, Wang Ye's Russian was by far the best at this point.

It was strange, really. When Wang Ye had been in high school, he had been terrible at English. No matter how hard he studied, he could never learn it.

But when it came to Russian, it was as if something had clicked. Whatever the teacher taught, he understood right away!

After only a few months of training, Liu Xiaojie and the others had learned just the basics—Russian letters, simple grammar, and everyday dialogue.

But Wang Ye could already hold daily conversations with the training instructor.

Of course, that was Wang Ye before his "rebirth." As for now...

He had studied and worked in Moscow for nearly eight years!

After returning to China, he had also worked in trade with Russia. His Russian might not have been good enough for simultaneous interpretation, but in both vocabulary and pronunciation, he was practically on par with an ordinary Russian.

As for the short, plump girl, there was no point even mentioning her Russian. Otherwise, she would not have been too afraid to buy something by herself and insisted on dragging Wang Ye along.

Wang Ye nodded. He happened to be thirsty too and wanted to buy a bottle of water.

Seeing this, Liu Xiaojie hurriedly said, "Wang Dan, let's go too. We can buy some food and drinks."

He was speaking to the tall, thin girl, and Wang Ye learned that her name was Wang Dan.

Wang Dan nodded slightly, ignoring Liu Xiaojie. Instead, she turned to the short, plump girl and said, "Xiaoyun, what do you want to buy? There's no need to buy food. I still have several cups of instant noodles in my suitcase. We can eat them later if we get hungry."

But Li Xiaoyun shook her head and said with a smile, "We still need to buy something. Are we supposed to eat instant noodles dry without hot water? Let's see if they have cake or something. We can just grab a little food."

Before they could settle on what exactly to buy, a short, lean Chinese boy walked straight toward Wang Ye and the others.

He greeted them with a smile from afar. "Welcome, welcome! Teacher Wu called for me just now, so I only found out you'd arrived. Oh, right, I'm Zhou Yuan. I got here a few months before you, and I came through the same agency."

Although they did not know the boy, Wang Ye and the others had all heard the name Zhou Yuan.

Teacher Wu, who had led their group, had told them about him long ago. Zhou Yuan was the "class monitor" for their batch and had arrived earlier than them.

So once they got here, they could ask Zhou Yuan for help if anything came up.

In a foreign land, even meeting someone from the same country made them fellow townsfolk, creating an instinctive sense of closeness.

Not to mention that Zhou Yuan was from the same province, had gone through the same agency, and had come abroad to study in the same year. He was truly one of their own.

After everyone introduced themselves to Zhou Yuan, Wang Ye took the opportunity to remember the other students' names.

He had just learned the tall, thin girl's name: Wang Dan.

The short, plump girl was Li Xiaoyun.

There were four other students, all boys. Including Wang Ye and the others, the final group to arrive consisted of eight students in total.

After chatting for a few minutes, Li Xiaoyun brought up going to the little shop again.

The moment Zhou Yuan heard that, he patted his chest and said he would take them there.

He had already been in Moscow for nearly half a year. The little bit of Russian needed to buy things was a piece of cake for him!

When the other boys heard their conversation, they hurried over too, saying they wanted to come along.

So they piled their luggage in a corner against the wall and, led by Zhou Yuan, marched into the little shop in a large group.

It was already fairly late, and there were not many people in the shop.

Only a fat middle-aged saleswoman sat lazily behind the register.

Wang Ye took a glance around. This little shop was not like the supermarkets commonly seen in China, but rather a very traditional old-fashioned store.

All the goods were kept behind glass counters. If you wanted to buy something, you had to tell the saleswoman and have her take it out for you.

"Look around first and decide what you want. Then tell me one by one, and I'll buy it for you. Oh, right, you don't have any rubles on you, do you? This shop doesn't take U.S. dollars directly. How about this? I'll lend each of you two hundred rubles. That should be enough for shopping. Tomorrow, I'll take you to exchange some rubles, and you can pay me back then," Zhou Yuan said as he took out his wallet from his pants pocket and began handing out money.

He really was a helpful person. Otherwise, they would not have chosen him as class monitor...

Wang Ye and the others had just arrived from China, and all the money they carried was in U.S. dollars. In Russia, although the local currency was the ruble, the true hard currency was the U.S. dollar...

The school's notices listed tuition, insurance, and the like entirely in U.S. dollars.

Of course, when actually buying things or paying fees, they still needed to use rubles.

But in Moscow, exchanging U.S. dollars for rubles was incredibly convenient. Currency exchange booths were everywhere.

These booths were easy to spot. They had only a small exchange window, with a large electronic board above it displaying the dollar-to-ruble exchange rate.

You only had to hand over your dollars, and you could receive the corresponding amount of rubles at that day's exchange rate.

No procedures or identification were needed.

At the beginning of 2001, one U.S. dollar could be exchanged for around twenty-five rubles.

Many people might not have imagined that just ten years earlier, the ruble and the U.S. dollar had been worth roughly the same.

After the so-called "shock therapy," the ruble began to depreciate sharply, and the savings ordinary people had accumulated over many years were nearly wiped out...

Before Wang Ye and the others came over, the agency had told them that bringing U.S. dollars would be enough.

The school's admission notice also listed tuition, accommodation fees, and so on in U.S. dollars.

The saleswoman had probably seen too many international students while working here. When Wang Ye and the others entered, she did not even raise her head, remaining seated as she read a book in her hands.

It had to be said that reading was an extremely common habit in Russia.

On buses, in the subway, and among crowds queuing outside museums, one could see plenty of people holding a book and reading.

It was said that Russia's university graduate rate exceeded ninety percent, and the general level of education among its people was remarkably high. In that regard, it was far ahead of many countries.

The little shop sold fairly simple things, mostly bread, milk, drinks, snacks, and the like.

"The bread here is pretty good, but remember to buy white bread. Don't ever buy black bread. That stuff is sour and hard, and we're not used to it!" Zhou Yuan introduced.

Back in China, people called Russian bread "dalieba," especially the dalieba from Harbin. But it was actually different from the bread here in Russia—it had been modified and adapted to local tastes.