Jan 29

Woo, what a day it was yesterday. Well, I guess I should start with the night before. I met up with some of the people from the group at our new favorite bar Choomadan, but the bar was full so we had to walk around until we found another place to go. A few blocks away we found a little café that serves beer, so we went in and pretty much took over the place. More of our friends kept coming at meeting us and by the café’s closing time at 10:00 we had pulled together nearly all their tables and were sitting in a huge group. I felt sorry for the workers who had to accommodate us. I had a couple beers and talked with people and it was a good time. When it was time to go the group sort of split up and I went with a group back to Choomadan in hopes of finding some room this time. Luckily we found a booth and were all able to cram in and around it. I had another beer and a couple shots of vodka (the shots they give in Russia are about one and a half to two times as big as a typical shot in America, so two shots would come to about 3 or four by our standards) and by then I was at a perfect level of inebriation and had a great time hanging out and talking with everyone. I found out that Matt, my roommate from the orientation, is a huge Kids in the Hall fan, so we talked about that for a while and it made me want to watch it so bad. At about 11:30 Vickie and I decided to head home because most public transportation stops at midnight (more on that later), so we headed back down to Sredniy Prospekt to see if we could catch a Marshrutka home. But first, we decided that a stop at McDonald’s sounded really really good. Only the walk-up window was open so we stood in line for about a half an hour to get our food but it was totally worth it. The marshrutkas all stop right in front of this McDonald’s, so we finished our food and waited around hoping that we weren’t too late to catch a ride home. We stood around for about 20 minutes with no luck and finally resigned ourselves to the fact that we were probably going to have to walk home. After we got about one block down I saw a marshrutka number 44 (the one we needed) heading back the other way, so we raced back to in front of the McDonalds to see if he would still give us a ride. There were a few other people talking to the driver, apparently negotiating whether or not they could get a ride and the driver asked us where we wanted to go. I said “to Gavanskaya,” and he gave it a few seconds of consideration and then waved us on. Since the marshrutkas are all privately owned, the drivers can decided if it’s worth staying out a little later than midnight if there are still people who are willing to pay. It was about 12:30 at this point, so I think we literally caught the last one of the night. We were very grateful, and made it home with no problems. I stayed up a little longer and listened to my iPod in bed (I’ve been way into the song “Back on the Chain Gang” by the Pretenders lately). That was Friday night. Saturday we had to get up early and meet the group at the usual hotel at 10:00 (the hotel where I catch the bus to school every morning). We were loaded into bus-vans and were then taken on a driving tour of the city. We had a Russian speaking tour guide in our bus-van and I kind of tuned her out a lot of the time, but I caught all the important things she said. We drove by a lot of things that I hadn’t seen yet, so I was grateful for the chance. The tour ended at the Peter and Paul Fortress on the Petrograd Site (The other main island of St. Petersburg besides Vasilesvskiy), where we were given a walking tour of the fortress. This is where the statue with the tiny head is, and I got my picture taken with it (check out flickr, there should be a lot of new pictures). The cathedral inside the fortress is the tallest building in the city (it’s pretty short for a tallest building though, and it’s all in the steeple) and the inside was amazing. This is where almost all of the Russian Tsars are buried. After the fortress it was time for all of us to get our HIV tests again, so they drove us to the health clinic where we all waited around for a long time while everybody had their blood drawn, and then as a way of apologizing for making us get or blood drawn twice needlessly, Nathan the program director took us to lunch courtesy of CIEE. We went to a little café where we all had a little piece of meat pie (delicious) and a small cup of soup. It was really good, but everyone was still hungry afterwards, so when we were all done I followed a group back to McDonalds again (I know, it’s lame, but it was easy and convenient. I’m not going to make a habit of it). After finishing I met up with Vickie who had gone to Sbarro’s with a different group, and we then headed home to rest up for a while before going out later (well, I’m not sure if Vickie went out later or night, but I was going to). I ate dinner, listened to some music, and waited to hear from Nick as to where he and some of the other people were meeting up. Apparently the plan was for everyone to meet at this dance club called Club Metro at 11:00, but some people were going to meet up at a bar somewhere first. I think I explained before about how reluctant I am about going to dance clubs. Well I was feeling even more down on the idea by the time night rolled around, but I figured I would still meet up with people beforehand and play it by ear from their. After not hearing from anyone for a while, I called Ingrid and asked where they were and where I should meet them. She told me to get to the Gostiny Dvor metro station and call her from there, so I headed out to the metro. This was my first time riding the metro (any metro in fact) alone, but it was a breeze. I only had to go one stop. I got there and tried calling Ingrid and Nick, but neither of them would answer, so I decided to walk around for a bit and then try again. I cross one street and look down and see the Church on Spilt Blood looming a few blocks away, so I head towards it and start snapping pictures. It’s totally amazing. It’s exactly what most people probably think of when they think if Russia. Bug domes and ornate decorations and everything (again, check out the flickr). There was a guy who approached me in front of the church. I said I didn’t understand so he tried speaking in English. He only knew a few words. I think he was trying to say that he paints portraits. He kept saying what sounded like, “Portrait… here… time… 5 minute,” and I said “sorry, maybe another time” and walked away. Both Nick and Ingrid had tried calling while I was walking towards the church but the phone kept cutting out (I’m telling you, cell phone service in Russia is terrible) but after I saw the church I was ready to find them. I called Ingrid back and Kara answered. She said they were in an Irish Pub called Telegraph and explained the directions to me. This is where things went wrong. I told here I was at the Gostiny Dvor metro (which I was, in fact, approaching from the church) and she said to take a right from there onto Nevskiy Prospekt. So I did. I got all the way down to the Hermitage when I realized that I had obviously gone the wrong way somehow, because the Hermitage is at the very end of Nevskiy. I took the opportunity to take some pictures of the Hermitage and then headed back, knowing that the bar must have to be on the other side of the metro station. I headed back but I kept getting distracted by things along with way, like the Kazan Cathedral and some cool little park with a big statue. I walked past another exit from the Gostiny Dvor metro station, and realized that this must have been the way they rest of the group had come out and for them it would have been a right indeed. That explains it. I eventually made it to the bar with about ten minutes to spend there before everyone was leaving. It wasn’t a really big crowd, only Nick, John, Reed, Abby, Kara, Tsvety, and Ingrid. I pulled up a chair and explained the mix up to them and after a couple minutes this big Russian guy from the table behind me comes up to me and just stares at me intimidatingly. After a few seconds he starts speaking to me in Russian, none of which I could easily understand. HE put his arm around me and got really close. He shook my hand and kept trying to explain what he wanted to me through his drunken haze. I finally figured out that, from where I was sitting I was blocking his view of the TV that was playing a soccer game, and so I crammed into the side booth to accommodate him. It was a little scary but no problem in the end. His friend apologized to me for him in English on his way out. I told him it was no bog deal. So, the rest of the group decided not to go to club Metro but instead to some little place they had heard about called Dacha. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to go in, but I followed them there anyway. It was a few blocks away on a small, sketchy side street. It wasn’t really a dance club, but more of just a night club. It was packed and looked hot a sweaty and smoky, and by that point I wasn’t really up for something like that. A guy outside said to us in English, “welcome to the most democratic of all the night clubs in the Soviet Union!” I told everyone I was cutting out and they said goodbye and went inside. By this time it was about 12:30 and I was now stuck with the dilemma of how to get home. The public transportation had apparently all stopped, so I was in a bit of a rut. I started walking down Nevskiy and saw a couple other people waiting for a bus. I remembered that bus number 147 goes from Nevskiy to right in front of my apartment, and if these other people are waiting then maybe there is one more bus to ride. I waited for about 15 minutes with no luck. The other option for late-night transport is to hail a cab. Mind you, these aren’t regular cabs. Most of them are people who own their own cars who drive around at night giving rides to people who flag them down. Apparently it’s totally safe and everybody does it all the time, but I wasn’t up to the challenge of negotiating prices in Russian and didn’t really want to pay for a cab fare by myself, so that left me with just one option to get home: walk. So, that’s what I did. To Gavanskaya all toe way from Nevskiy. I’m sure that doesn’t mean anything to anybody reading this, but let me assure you, it’s pretty far. Especially if you are walking alone at 1:00 AM. But I did it anyways. It was pretty crazy of me I guess, but I figured it would be good two have walked it at least once while I was in St. Petersburg. I tried calling the Diamond in Eugene during my walk by nobody was home. I left a brief message. There were some great views of the city at night from the bridge to Vasilevskiy and walking along the Neva. But, I don’t think I will ever walk that again. When I got back home and took off my shoes I discovered three huge blisters on my feet. My boots are great for walking in the snow and slush, but apparently aren’t to great on my feet. They’ll be alright, though, Mom and Dad (Grandma too), I know you’ll be reading this, don’t worry about my feet. The boots will be fine. After draining my blisters I went to sleep. I haven’t left my room yet this morning. I am meeting Katie at the metro station at 2:00 and we will go to Soiree where I will hopefully be able to upload these last couple posts to the blog and my pictures to flickr. Tomorrow it’s back to school. Hope everyone’s doing alright. Talk to you later.

-Austin

Jan 27

Today is Friday, the 27th of January (65th anniversary of the beginning of the Siege of Leningrad by the way [oh, and two days ago was Russian folk singer Vladimir Vysotskiy’s birthday]). I didn’t write any updates the last two days mostly because my evenings were occupied with my secret project of making an inner pocket in my jacket. I kept it a secret only from my host family, mainly because I didn’t want to try and explain what I was doing. I told everyone at school about it though. I’ve discovered that an inner pocket is essential here. There are thieves everywhere and they all want to steal things from you pockets! Or so we’ve been told. I want to carry my camera around but I don’t want to leave it in a pocket where it could be easily snatched. Since now I’ve been carrying it around in my bag where it’s probably safe but much more of a hassle to get out and as a result I end up taking a lot less pictures. So I thought it over the other day and realized I had everything I would need to make the pocket with:
1. a knife
2. a sewing kit
3. a piece of cloth
I ended up using an extra handkerchief I had brought and was willing to sacrifice for the good of the pocket. On Wednesday night I began phase one: making the pocket. I cut the handkerchief in half, folded part of it up, folded in the corneres and sewed them up. I’m no seamstress (or seamster? I don’t know what the masculine form would be), so it was pretty poor workmanship and it took me a while to tie the knots and loop the thread and all that, so it took my a few hours. I commenced with phase two the following night: sewing it into the jacket. I felt bad cutting a slit in my jacket, but I new it would all be worth it in the end. I cut the slit to the right length and sewed in both edges, and voile! I know have an inside pocket to keep my camera and/or other valuables! It’s pretty crude, but it does the trick. The best part is, my jacket basically has a huge inner cavity that you can access from the hood zipper, which means you can pretty much fill the jacket full of things if you wanted to, and the pocket hangs inside this cavity, so if my sewing skills fail me and the pocket gives way (which it very well might), whatever is in the pocket will just fall into the big cavity where it will be safe until I retrieve it. It’s perfect. Check the flickr account for pictures. I think I might do a second one for the other side of my coat later, since I have that whole other half of the handkerchief. So yeah, I’ve been pretty excited about that lately. Other than making pockets, I’ve been doing some more exploring of the city. On Wednesday Vickie and I used the computers at the school and then headed back to Vasilevskiy Island where some people were meeting at a bar. We couldn’t get a hold of anyone for a while and we were both feeling pretty frustrated with the trials and tribulations of being in a foreign country (around here we call those “phase 2 days”), so we decided to go to McDonalds for some comfort food. We both had to buy more airtime for our cell phones, so we went to the place that Kara had recommended and got our cards and went to “Kofe Khaus” to sit down, have a drink and figure out how to add the time to our phones (Did I mention that I’ve been drinking coffe pretty much everyday? Aside from the occasional café stop, my host mom gives it to me with breakfast every morning. It’s alright as long as I add a bunch of sugar. I don’t think I’ll ever get to the point where I would ever NEED it, I never feel the effect of caffeine anyway). Once we had our minutes added we were able to get a hold of some people and found out they were at a bar pretty much across the street, so we went there and met up with the gang. It was called “Choomadan”, which apparently means “large suitcase”, and it’s pretty cool. In fact, we’re all meeting up again there later tonight. I sat and talked with people for a while and had a beer while all the Russians sitting around us gave us weird looks and obviously annoyed by the room full of loud Americans. These two guys across the bar kept eyeing me and I expected them to approach me about something at any moment, but they left me alone. When the party was over Vickie and I caught the Marshrutka home, where I started said pocket-project. On Thursday we got a little more adventurous. We decided to go to an open-air market in the far north of the city that Nick had heard about from one of the returning students. Apparently it was a good place to buy coats. We had to ride the Green Line to Gostiniy Dvor / Nevskiy Prospekt, transfer to the Blue Line and take it all the way to the last stop. The market wasn’t that great, mostly meats and produce. I’ve heard there are much larger, much more diverse markets in other parts of the city where you can buy all kinds of crazy knick-knacks. I also really want to find the booths that sell bootleg CDs and DVDs for dirt-cheap. I want to find out about cool Russian music that way. I also want to buy kitschy soviet memorabilia and stuff like that for myself and for presents for people. But there was nothing like that at this market. I did buy a couple of delicious cheese blinis, however, for a dollar each. You can’t beat that. On the metro ride back Vickie accidentally got stuck on the train without us and had to ride to the next stop, get off and get on the next one with us. It was pretty funny. We got home alright and after dinner I finished my pocket. I guess I haven’t really written about the food I’ve been eating here. My host mom makes all my breakfasts and dinners, and for the most part it’s pretty monotonous. Every morning this week I’ve had a fried-egg patty with bread and cheese on the side, a cup of yogurt, and a cup of coffee. Dinner always starts with a huge bowl of soup. Usually it’s a weird mix of vegetables, beef and hot dog chunks. After that is the main course, which is always a meat dish with something starchy, usually potatoes but sometimes pasta or rice. Last night was different though. She made me borscht for the first time (not bad, I have to say), and then the main course was chicken curry with rice! She explained to me how in Russia they eat food from all over: China, Japan, India, etc. As if I thought that people in Russian never ate anything but Russian food. I had blinis last weekend so I hope she’ll make them for me again this weekend. They are quite delicious. I’ve finally discovered the small grocery store across the street too, so if ever I’m still hungry some evening (not likely), I can skip over to the store and get whatever I want. Stuff at the grocery stores is amazingly cheap. The other day I bought to bottles of water, an orange soda (Mirinda. I haven’t had it since the Czech Republic!) and a bag of candy and it all cost me about $2. I will definitely be stopping there more often, especially for water since you can’t drink out of the tap here and most homes don’t usually have a supply of drinking water on hand. Sometimes I get a little freaked out by the thought that I can’t drink as much water as I want whenever I want and wherever I want, I have to plan ahead and make sure I have water available when I might want it. So, right now it’s about 5:30 and I’m just hanging around the apartment until 7:30 when we are going to go meet up with everyone at Vasileostravskaya Metro Station and head to Choomadan, and then we might go somewhere else from there. Nobody wants to stay out too late tonight because we have a group excursion to the Peter and Paul Fortress at 10:00 tomorrow morning. Oh, and we have to get HIV tests again cause apparently the ones we got in America are no good here and we never really needed to get them in the first place. Tomorrow night there’s talk of going to a dance club, which I’m a little nervous about but am interested in trying it out none the less. To me it seems like people in those kind of clubs take themselves way too seriously and I don’t really like that. I mean, I like to dance, but the way I like to dance is silly and fun and not meant to be taken seriously at all and I feel like that wouldn’t fly in a dance club. But, I talked about it with Ingrid and Kara and they assured me that in European dance clubs nobody really knows how to dance well and I’ll fit in just fine. So, we’ll see how it goes. I guess that’s quite enough typing for now. Sorry to make such long posts like this, but being able to write them at home and then post them later I have the luxury of taking my time and not having to worry about my internet minutes running out. So, I guess you’ll just have to get used to reading long posts if you want to know what I’m doing. I hope everyone back home is doing alright, and I look forward to talking with you sometime soon. Later!


-Austin

three

So I took my laptop to Café Soiree today to try and take advantage of the free wireless internet, but was deeply saddened by the fact that the internet would barely work for me while it seemed fine for the other people with their laptops. It would work in sporadic bursts and then not load any pages forever. I managed to check my email and that’s about it. I’m guessing it’s a Mac thing. Perhaps Russia is not very Mac-friendly. So, I am stuck writing again from my apartment without the internet. Tomorrow I will put some money on my account at the school’s computer lab and then I should be able to upload everything there. It must be weird for anybody reading this blog to see the posts come all at once like this when in fact they have all been written over a longer period of time. Oh well, I guess you’ll have to put up with it. Today was the first day of classes, and all in all it wasn’t too bad. My first class of the day was Newspaper Reading, which will probably end up being the hardest and my least favorite class. Today it required a lot of listening and repeating, which I’m bad at, and I think I made a bad first impression on the teacher. She handed out workbooks that I assumed were ours too keep, and only after I had taken notes in it did she tell us that they weren’t ours and that we have to buy our own from the bookstore. I hope she doesn’t look in the one I use and get mad. My next class was Conversation, and it was actually really great. The teacher is really funny and easy going and basically the class is just going to be us talking about whatever subjects come up or that we feel like talking about. Today he just asked us for some topics and then went off on them for a while having us contribute something every now and then. After Conversation we had lunch, and then our next class was a literature lecture. I think this class will be pretty interesting. Today we learned all about the life and works of the Russian author Ivan Bunin, and our future classes will all be about different authors and themes. On other days I have classes on grammar and phonetics and a lecture on civilization. Mind you this is all in Russian. So far it’s actually been pretty easy to understand everything the professors are saying. I understand them a lot more than I understand other Russians when I hear them talking on the street or where ever, and I guess it’s part of their job to be able to speak to foreign students in a way that they can understand but it’s encouraging none the less to listen and understand them. And it’s only going to get better as the term progresses. After classes about six of us caught a bus to get to Soiree where we hung out for a while using (and not using, in my case) the internet, eating chicken wings and drinking beer. After it started getting dark Vickie and I headed to the Metro station to get back home. I’m starting to get comfortable using the Metro, even with the crazy rush-hour crowds like today. I heard that they are raising the price of the Metro and all public transportation by 2 rubles starting on February first, so it will be a little annoying to have to get out 12 rubles instead of ten, but it’s still pretty cheap (about 40 cents). From Vasileostravskaya station back home we rode the marshrutka again. I guess I’ll explain what that is now. The marshrutkas are minivans that hold about ten people each and travel in set routes that mimic the bus routes and sometimes even have the same route number. The difference is that you can hop on or off at any point during the marshrutka’s route by waving it down or telling the driver to stop. It’s kind of intimidating at first, but I think I’ve gotten the hang of it. Actually, I still haven’t had the need to ask the driver to stop yet because every time there is someone else getting on or off at the right spot and I just get out then. The way you pay is also interesting. The driver handles all the money, so once you get inside and get settled in your seat you have to pass your money up to the front, and when the driver gives you your change the other passengers often have to pass it back for you. If you sit in the front you end up passing lots of money back and forth and asking how people each amount is for and telling the driver, etc. It’s weird, but it’s a good way to get around. Oh yeah, the weather really warmed up today! Instead of –20 degrees Celsius it was hovering just below zero degrees most of the day, and it actually felt warm almost compared to the days before! I’ve been assured that this is now the normal winter weather in St. Petersburg, and I think I can definitely live with it. Well, right now I’m tired and I need to take a shower soon, so I will end this here. Bye.


-Austin

two

Boy, there’s just so much to write about that I don’t even know where to begin. I guess I’ll pick up from where I left off before and try to be brief about everything. Today is Monday, and yesterday I met with a bunch of people from the group and we all got cell phones. This is the first real cell phone I’ve ever had, and so far it’s been pretty exciting. It took us forever to all choose out our phones and get them all set up. We filled up this little cell phone store and they had to turn away a lot pf other people who came in. After the cell phones and calling cards were taken care of a bunch of us went to a nice café and hung out for a while before heading home. I live right next door to one of the other program members, Vickie, and together we tried walking back to our apartments. The cell phone place and café were both near the Vasileostrovskaya metro station, which is the closest metro station to Vickie and my apartments but it’s still about a mile and a half away. We had ridden a Martrushka (I’ll explain what those are another time) earlier to meet the rest of the group at the McDonalds near the metro station, but we decided to try walking back home despite the cold, just so we could get a better idea of our surroundings. It was a straight shot down Sredniy Prospekt (Middle Street) back to our apartments on Gavanskaya, but we found out quickly that a few blocks beyond the metro station Sredniy becomes a very sketchy street with very few street lamps and hardly anybody out on the streets. At one point the road was all ripped up as if it were under construction, but it looked like there had been no construction taking place for months, I also saw Nazi / Russian nationalist graffiti on the fences (it said “slava Rossia”, or “long live Russia,” which I’ve heard is their slogan). All in all, it was not a good place to be after dark, and we were debating heading back and trying to catch another martrushka home, but we pushed onward and eventually came upon our street. We are definitely going to avoid walking down Sredniy as much as possible from now on. This morning we had to get all set up for our classes, so in order to get to the campus all the way across town at Smolniy, my host mom had to escort me to the hotel where the mini-van for foreign students picks everyone up and takes them to campus. It was relatively easy and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to do it by myself (well, with Vickie I guess) every day from now on. At the campus we were all taken to a big hall where they administered our language placement tests. This consisted of a few short answer questions and a 140-question exam that was supposed to test our grammar. The written answers were easy enough, and the grammar exam started out easier enough but it got really hard really fast, and I ended up guessing on many of the questions. It’s kind of unfair, though, because the reason I didn’t know a lot of the answers was because I didn’t know some of the words they were using, which would just be testing my vocabulary knowledge and not so much my grammar skills, Oh well. The other part of the placement test was a brief interview with a couple of the staff members. I was a little nervous going in, but it proved to be really easy. They asked simple questions about where I’m from, where I go to school, family, etc. I felt like I did pretty well over all, and the graders must have thought so to, because when we got our class assignments I found myself in Group 2, or the second highest group. Group 1 is mainly for the students who were here in the fall and are continuing with a second semester (only three us “new” students were placed in Group 1), so I feel pretty good about my placement. Hopefully I can live up to it. We got a tour of the facilities and the area around the campus (there are some amazing cathedrals that are part of the Smolniy complex, check the flickr account), and were then able to head out on our own for the day. I followed a group down to Nevskiy Prospekt, the big main street in St. Petersburg. We stepped inside the Vosstania metro station to get warm for a second and almost became the victims of a street scam, but luckily they warned us all about this kind of stuff at our orientation. A guy came up to us and started speaking to me in particular. I still don’t know Russian well enough to understand what he was saying, but it didn’t matter because we all knew he was up to no good and we weren’t about to fall victim to his trick. I told him that we didn’t understand him and then we all walked back outside while he stood there with a disappointed look on his face. It had become blatantly obvious to all of us that the man standing against the wall on the other side of us was his partner, and was waiting for us to be distracted by the first guy so he could pick out pockets or take things from our bags, but we are all too paranoid after the horror stories about street crimes that the program directors had told us, so we knew what was going on (Speaking of scams, I also had my ATM / Debit card account breached after my first try using a Russian ATM at the airport the first day I arrived. I talked to the program director about it and he said it’s actually pretty common for this to happen at airport ATMs, and it happened to him at the airport in Burlington, Vermont of all places. Apparently members of Bulgarian or Romanian crime syndicates places sensors on ATMs that pick up PINs and allow them to get into peoples’ accounts, and they especially target airport ATMs because there are always lots of people coming and going from all over the world and it’s really hard to track the people who do it. No money was lost luckily, and everything should work out fine, but it’s pretty annoying). After the incident at Vosstania we ducked into a café on Nevskiy where I had an espresso and a bon-bon, and after our little rest we broke up into smaller groups. I went with a group to try and find the café with free wireless internet called “Soiree.” It’s only a couple blocks off of Nevskiy at the corner of Vosstania and Zhukovskogo. We peeked inside and it looked really great. A nice, quiet atmosphere that wasn’t too crowded, all sunken below the sidewalk. I think I’ll probably end up spending a lot of time there with my laptop. After that the group split up again and again it was just down to Vickie and me. We’ll probably end up hanging out a lot because at the end of the day with both need to end up at the same place and it’s a lot better to get back home with somebody else than it is alone. She followed my to help me find the apartment where my friend Emily supposedly lives. I know Emily from school, where we met the first week of freshman year in our Russian class of course, and we’ve been pretty good friends since then. She has been living and studying in St. Petersburg since August and, as I understand it, now lives in an apartment with circus performers. I had copied down her address from Facebook.com and discovered that it was about a block away from Soiree, so Vickie and I went looking for it. We got to the area where the building should be when I realized that I don’t really know how to find the exact building or apartment, and since it was really cold out and we were both really tired we decided to just head home. I’ll have to get a hold of Emily through email soon. We decided to try riding the metro for the first time, and it was pretty intimidating. It was right during the 5 to 6 o’clock rush and the station was way crowded. We stood around looking at the map trying to figure out which line to board and where until we finally figured it out and made it safely to Vasileostrovskaya station. We didn’t want to walk down Sredniy again like the night before, so we caught the Marshrutka and despite our anxiety about not knowing when or where to get off we made it home just fine, and here I am now. I still haven’t gotten on the internet yet so I have to keep writing entries in word and then pasting them into blogger later, but it seems like it’s working fine that way. I have so many other little observations and small anecdotes that I want to tell but that would take forever. I guess all the best stuff will find its way to the blog eventually. As far as pictures go, I haven’t really been taking that many. I guess I just feel weird taking out my camera and taking pictures of everything like a tourist when there are so many people around, plus I’m afraid of letting everyone around me know that I have a camera and becoming a target for theft (see what horrible those stories of street crimes has done to me?!), but I have taken some and there should be some up on flickr by the time anyone reads this. I will start taking more soon, I promise. Tomorrow we start our classes and I’m a little nervous but I think it’ll be just fine. I have to get myself to campus without my host mom’s help, but I think that will be fine too. I am going to stop typing now, I’ve gone way longer than I had anticipated. I hope nobody minds. Bye bye for now.


-Austin

one

I’m here in St. Petersburg now. I got to my host family’s apartment yesterday afternoon. I am writing this in a Word document, which I will put on my thumb drive and upload to the blog later, and this is how I suspect I will be writing most of my entries. Actually, maybe not, because apparently all I have to do is buy a special card and get a phone cable and I can get on the internet from the apartment. I’m going to have to look into that. Well, what can I say about Russia so far? I guess I haven’t really done enough to really comment on it. All the students met in a big group at the airport and we were whisked of to a small town outside of the city called Repino for our orientation. The town is northwest of the city and used to be part of Finland. The temperature has been hovering steadily around –20 C, which is somewhere just below –5 F, so, it’s cold. The group stayed in a hotel in Repino and we all got to know each other. I have to say that I really like the group I’m with. Everyone is really nice and cool and easy to get along with for the most part. The program directors are great too. At night we would go to the small bar on the hotel grounds and hang out and drink Russian beer. There was a “disco” Friday night which basically consisted of a few members from our group and a handful of older Russians hanging around. All in all, the orientation was a great first experience of Russia and a great way to get acquainted with the group. On Saturday after lunch we packed up all our things and were loaded on to minivans and brought back to St. Petersburg to be dropped off at our host families, whom we had just learned about the day before. I’m living in an apartment on Vasilevskiy Island, which makes up a major chunk of the city. The street I live on is called Gavanskaya, which I discovered is derived from the word “gavan” which means harbor (the Gulf of Finland is only a few blocks away). My host mother’s full name is Svetlana Alekseevich Belova. I have no host father. The program director told me a little bit about the family situation. Apparently, my host mother is a widow whose husband was a fisherman and died in a boating accident (much like my uncle, so I’ll have something to talk about). Svetlana has two sons, Aleksandr and Aleksee, but I guess only one of them lives here in the apartment. The director told me that they too are fisherman, but once I met my host brother I realized this had to be false. He is a very hip looking young man who apparently had a bunch of friends over last night while I was sleeping (I could here them coming and going until about 4 in the moning). I’m not even sure which host brother this is yet, and in general I’m still kind of confused about the whole family situation. I’m sure it will become clear soon enough. They host students a lot apparently, but the mother speaks no English and I’m not sure about the son(s) yet, so it’s been a little difficult communicating so far but all in all I think I’m doing OK with my Russian. I was so exhausted from my trip and not getting much sleep in Repino that I went to bed at 8:00 without even really saying goodnight. I hope I didn’t offend anyone. I didn’t get up until I heard my host mom up and about, which was about 10:00, so I was in bed for quite a while. I had breakfast (blini, which were delicious) and took a shower and now I’m writing this. I think my host brother is up now, or someone else is here, so I should probably go out and be a little more social. So, that’s everything so far. More as it develops.


-Austin

Guess where I am...

No, not Russia (yet). I am actually thousands of feet above the North Atlantic Ocean on my way to Frankfurt. Yeah, apparently they have internet on airplanes now. It's kind of expensive, but what the hell. I found a promotional code that cuts the cost in half, so there you go. This flight isn't nearly as interesting as the flight from New York to London I took a few years back. Then they had lots of different things to entertain yourself with, with personal screens and lots of cool music channels, and a map that shows you where the plane it at. They have that map on this flight to, but they only show it when they feel like it up on the communal screens. Right now all they're showing is some stupid movie about soccer (it's a Lufthansa flight, go figure). I managed to score a seat in the front row because the flight isn't very full, but it still isn't all that comfortable. Oh well, only three more hours or something. Yikes. I tried to get up and use the bathroom a little bit ago, but a flight attendant told me I have to go sit back down. There was a lot of turbulence earlier, but not when I got up. Whatever. I think it's OK ti get up now, so I'll wrap this up. Now, for sure this time, the next post will be from Russia! Bye.


-Austin

P.S. Apparently the temperature in St. Petersburg right now is -15 degrees Farenheit. This is going to be great.

One last thing before I go...

здравствуйте,
This is the first blog of any kind that I've kept for about two years, but I figured it would be good to keep track of my time abroad in a place where other people can view it to. I don't know how often I will realistically be able to post here, but I will do my darnedest to try and keep up. I will also be posting pictures to my flickr account as often as possible (there's a link to that on my sidebar), so check that out if you get the chance. I haven't left for Russia yet. It's Monday night right now, and tomorrow afternoon the family and I are heading to Hillsboro to spend the night at my Aunt and Uncle's house in order to get me to PDX Wednesday morning bright and early, and then I'm off! It's all pretty overwhelming, but I think I'm ready. Hopefully I'll be able to write something here within my first week in St. Petersburg, but again, I really have no idea what the situation there will be. We'll just have to wait it out together. But most assuredly, the next time you hear from me I will be in Russia! Wish me luck.


-Austin