snnnowww!

today was the first snow fall. it seems like fall barely started. so now leaves are falling and changing colors and being covered with snow and slush. verrry pleasant.

but. i've been busy. we try to do cultural things on the weekends, been to the kunstkammer museum which is the ethnography and anthropology museum and where peter the great just kept his weird collections. like deformed babies.

this past weekend we went to constantine palace. which was being made for peter the great down by peterhof but peter forgot about it and liked peterhof later and it was basically forgotten for 80 years. now it's where all the presidents of different countries come to meet like for the economic convention and the G8 meetings. it was the first time our program has taken students there since usually its in use by Putin.

we've begun teaching our english class. they are quite proficient so i'm not positive what conversation topics to use... they love to learn new slang tho. and i've learned that russians honestly believe that cell phones and microwaves cause cancer and are bad for ones health. our class ranges from 17-23 with about 10 students total. class is 3 hours long, once a week.

strange.

i've also met lots of foreigners, from holland, england, switzerland, germany, italy as well as the random russians. walking home from the gym the other week a black man gave me his phone number. first, strange for that to happen. mostly because there are about 10 black people in this entire city.

i forgot to post this! but a few weeks ago we got stopped by the militisia getting off the metro and they asked to see our documents. ours checked out fine and they didn't hassle us or anything but last friday a student was robbed by a "militsia" (they aren't sure if it was an official one because they clearly arent supposed to do that).

it seems to be a severe love-hate thing with americans so its safe to keep your mouth shut until you get the right vibe.

also found out our host dad was a child during the leningrad siege, worked on building rockets and spaceships during the cold war, had to go to america during the soviet era and use a fake name, and then came back to russia when they cut the funding for the sciences and they started hosting students and he now paints and does poetry and still works. quite the life.

we're headed to estonia this weekend which should be fun! and perhaps my mom and maggie's mom will be out here the end of october and then moscow early november and then amsterdam to see ashley right after that! and if i'm not too broke trying to get up to finland and riga!