exploring

i have been major slacking on this whole blogging thing.....

so for the past few weeks we've been out and about exploring st. petersburg and the surrounding areas on weekends and in school 5 days a week.

as for school. we're about a 10 minute walk from school but regardless continue to be late every day. the classes are quite lax but quite lengthly. each class is 90 minutes and usually without a break. the most calss i have a day is 4 is which is a solid 6 hours of class. i'm taking russian history, russian art history, civilization, grammar and conversation. both the histories overlap a lot and the civilization class overlaps the history with the present state of russia. quite draining. the grammar and conversation classes also overlap a lot but the conversation class is a lot more enjoyable. our professor, michael, is a 6 foot huge muscular russian who is the cheeriest man i have ever met. you say something in russian and he basically applauds you and thinks that what you said was the most creative thing ever. quite reassuring. haha

as for grammar. oh god.

we have this women russian professor who speaks fast and refuses to speak in english so when you don't understand something she just keeps saying the same thing over and over again getting louder. she will sit at the front desk, read off a statement or a question and point or call out someone's name to respond. there is no slacking or not paying attention. our entire class is just exhausted by the end of the 90 min.

outside of school, we have been to novgorod, where we saw a MILLION churches and went on lengthly tours of most of them. this was about a 4 hour bus ride south of st. petersburg to the oldest city in russia. it was nice to get away from the hustle of the city. there we also saw the kremlin and some students opted to go to a russian banya at night where, from what was described they walked around naked getting hit by sticks in a steam room then left and got sprayed or had cold water dumped on them. sounded like quite the experience.

we also went to peterhof which was gorgeous. they still had the fountains running which they are going to shut down soon

we have also been to the russian museum, the zoo (quite depressing. ill load pictures soon) and today we are going to the hermitage!

our host mom showed us where to get "discount" clothes.. although they just seemed to be relatively normal priced. clothes in russia are not cheap. i found a trench like coat for $30 dollars, but any thicker coat was over $150. relatively speaking, half a loaf of bread is 25 cents, small thing of vodka is $1.60, bus is 54 cents, metro is 60 cents. we also went to a nike discount store so maggie could get some tennis shoes for the gym and those set her back $90

our host mom's cooking is still amazing. blinieys are amazing. as is kasha. i eat at least a tomato a day. it seems to be the vegetable of choice. they are finally growing on me.

as for the nightlife we've been to a few different clubs including an old soviet bomb shelter, a live music punk rock place, random little bars. alcoholism is obvious here in russia. walking to school at 10am i pass people drinking gin tonic in a can and beers. the whole stereotype of the cold russian i haven't really agreed with though. the younger population is always laughing and smiling and are super friendly. the few older people i've asked for directions though are quite cold, one babushka acted like she was deaf.

still having a fabulous time and still alive.

oops

so tonight me and maggie were going to take the bus for about 20 min to meet up with a friend. we get on the bus it makes one more stop turns off the lights and basically won't let us off. the attendant is an old babushka and the male driver won't even acknowledge our presence after we make it clear we want off....

so after calling one of the directors and handing the phone off between me and the only russian speaking babushka we get off the bus a good 40 minutes later who knows how far south of saint petersburg we are after a screaming match between the attendant and the bus driver and she escorts us on to another bus that takes us to another metro and we somehow made it back.

good timesssssssss.

we took another gypsy cab sat night. 50-60 year old russian tried to get my number. i told him i didn't own a cell phone or have a phone at my house. he then gave his number to maggie.

if anyone wants it, let me know.

4 people have gotten mugged so far. one girl her bag got taken from under her legs at mcdonalds while she was on her comp. another girl had her purse taken while she was trying on boots and another guy had his jacket taken at a club. haven't heard about the details of the 4th event yet, but quite scary.

pictures!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2020902&id=1282410010&l=16a4d34274

(let me know if that doesn't work....)

language barrier wins again.

So i guess i could have gotten internet a week ago when andreu fixed it.... but he gave the password for the wireless to his mom and she never gave it to us because she assumed we got the internet to work... at dinner the word internet and the verb "to work" would come up and maggie and i just assumed that the internet was still broken.

oops? hahahahaha

BUT! we started class and have figured out the bus system and partially the metro system and have realized everything is DIRT cheap here. amazing.

i have also not walked more in my life. and i am quite impressed by the russian women who all seem to do this walking in their 5 inch stilletos. amazing. i guess despite my lack of 5inch heels, i still look russian as i have been approached MANY times and asked who knows what. my responses have been between a shrug, i dont know, or i don't speak russian. and then they shake their head and walk away.

i look russian enough when one day maggie and i went to the grocery store and maggie went first, the cashier asked her for smaller bills (prices in russia are like 200 rubles and if you try paying with a 1000 ruble bill they are not pleased) and maggie just blankly stared at the woman and shrugged. the cashier then turned to me and made some smug comment about how maggie didn't speak russian. i understood it but had no idea how to respond to it so she stared at me blankly and said "ah, you also"

but russians really aren't as unfriendly as everyone seems to think. our host brothers laugh more than most people i know. andreu is 24, still goes to school and is studying chinese and sells peoples cars... from what i gathered he is a free lance car salesman? but he has also done real estate deals (hence the tanning bed). sergei is 26 and i have no idea what he does. he's not as friendly with us. he has a girlfriend who was super sweet and came over for tea one night. her family is from the most east point of russia where you can find the best caviar- i still haven't made up my mind whether i'm a fan of caviar or not, but i've forced myself not to be picky here haha

as for food:

breakfast: oatmeal type dish, activia yogurt (one day we got prune flavored-sick.), coffee, salami and cheese, omelets, bliniys, cake, cereal, one day we had basically jam filled potstickers

lunch: bread, and basically things to put on said bread. today she threw fish- some salmon type looking stuff, cheese, meat, jam, caviar, something similar to salsa and tea LOTS of tea here.

dinner: usually a meat (loaf of hamburger, chicken, etc) macaroni noodles, salad (cucumbers and tomato in oil, pepper, and salt and some spice) or bliniys, or tortellini type thing

all meals are encouraged to be followed by tea and some kind of pastry dessert.

there is no going hungry in our homestay.

classes are pretty intense in the sense that they are each and hour and a half long. earliest starts at 10, latest they will go is until 5. i only have one day where i go all day long. we have grammar 3 times a week which is pretty intense. lots of oral, on the spot talking. conversation i love the teacher. he's hilarious and super outgoing. All of the teachers are russian so its nice to have someone be teaching you who has an inside perspective on the material.

campus is beautiful. i'll load pictures when i get around to it..

i'm freaked out by the militsia. which are basically like the cops who can stop anyone and everyone and ask to see their documents. most of the time they just look for a bribe. kinda sketch. we saw one the other day kicking a drunkard outside of the metro. they also walk around with guns a LOT bigger than a pistol and usually have their hand on them.