MOSCOW--I've eaten at McDonald's twice in the States Well, maybe twice. More like one and a half times. On road trips. Long road trips.

So I didn't exactly burst into tears of joy when I noticed that my Pushinskaya Square window faces the McDonald's sign, a yellow "M", and the Coke sign. Sings of my glorious American culture. I wasn't proud.

During my first days in Russia, I headed for the stalovaya or Russian style cafeteria (9 rubles for soup and meat pie). The food's edible and I knew I still had a stash of granola bars for emergencies, like lunch. I was going to live like the Russians, I told myself. I was going to grab food when I saw it. When you see any-thing that looks (and smells) edible in Russia, you buy it. It won't be there tomorrow. Or the next day.

Then, at the end of my first week in hot, polluted Moscow and dying for a drink other than the usual sugarwater they call juice, I succumbed to the inherently American urges in me. I entered McDonald's.

Why did I feel compelled to partake in a something so obviously non-Russian? I had always followed the saying "When in Moscow do as the Muscovites do," even if it involved eating tinned dog food. Fortunately, I have an excuse. Muscovites lie McDonald's. Well, rich Muscovites like McDonald's.

Maybe I was taken in by the continual advertising I had to look at each day at work in one of Moscow's central squares. Or maybe it was merely curiosity that led me to stand in the long line outside the glass-walled building. At least I was standing in a line. That's Russian, right?

It certainly was not to taste a gamburger, kartoshka (fries), or even marozhenoye (a sundae). I couldn't remember what they tasted like anyway. And American fast food was never my idea of dining out. But it didn't look like I was going to find Russian caviar any time soon.

Possibly I just wanted to participate in something so obviously American, so obviously from home. It would be just like going to a baseball game. Only I rarely go to baseball games, and I certainly never eat at McDonald's.

Now I drool at the idea of a chizburger and a molochny koktayl (milkshake, sounds kind of like a Molotov Cocktail, doesn't it?). Now I'll push my way through the crowds for Coke with ice.

Moscow McDonald's isn't anything like an American McDonald's in structure or customer-type. Russians treat it as an evening out, so its packed a dinner-time. At least you don't have to make reservations. As well as the Russian customers, there are always the foreigners happy to enter a western establishment (Moscow McDonald's is definitely an establishment) without paying hard currency.

The three-story building also bears little resemblance to a highwayside Micky D's. Surrounded by what looks like an ad for Epcot Center with its stereotypical depictions of various nationalities on the walls, Moscow McDonald's is air-conditioned and continually mopped by hordes of employees. Hordes. They probably want to show good customer service.

Only one crucial similarity remains. The food tastes the same. The Coke tastes like Coke, a milkshake tastes like a milkshake. And the hamburger topped with ketchup, mustard and pickle, tastes like, well, a hamburger. So know I know why I, too, worship the glaring yellow "M," the glorious products of a capitalist society. It's because of the food.

Maybe Pushkin wouldn't have written on ode to the Golden Arches. But I'm perfectly happy shelling out my 109 rubles (and rapidly rising) for a cheeseburger, coke and fries. One dollar for a few tastes of home.

Natasha H. Leland '95 is an intern in Moscow this summer.