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