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