Мама анархия, папа стакан портвейна

I'm at Soiree right now, but unfortunately I have no blog post to upload. I guess I haven't really felt like sitting down and writing about everything lately, but I will get around to it soon. I figured I'd at least make a quick post right now to say hey and what not. I'm going to see Chumbawumba tonight. More later.

И это ночь и ее электрический голос манит меня к себе

So I guess everything is more or less back to normal around here. I’ve gotten back into the swing of things just fine and now spring break feels like a long time ago. Thursday night there was this big thing for students that was pretty fun. Students from a few different departments at various schools around the city (I’m not sure what they all had in common exactly) were all invited to this little party in some fancy building on the Fantanka (a canal that runs through the city center) for some sort of anniversary of some specific university department or something. I never really learned what it was all for exactly. But there were all kinds of students there, both foreign and Russian. There was free beer, champagne and pizza. Of course, the pizza wasn’t great (I’ve never had really good pizza in Russia). There was some that had Canadian bacon and shrimp on it. There were all these weird games that we were supposed to be playing, but I wasn’t really interested in participating. They gave everyone a sheet of paper with various things on it that everyone had to go around to everybody else and ask them if they have done those things. For example, “somebody who was born in Moscow,” or “someone that has read more than five books by Dostoevsky.” A few people put me down as someone who “has never been to the Hermitage” (I know it’s terrible that I still haven’t been, and that I still haven’t been to the Russian Museum. I’m planning on going to both really soon though). There was also an animal written on the back of everyone’s sheets and they wanted us all to find everybody else with the same animal without showing them the name or saying it. Some people got into the whole thing, but I was too overwhelmed by all the people and how cramped it was in the small room we were all in. So I just walked around mingling, eating pizza and drinking beer. A few of us from school met this group of British girls that also study at Smolniy but that we’ve somehow never met before. They were all really nice and cool, and when the party started to get dull some of us decided to head out with them to a bar. We all went to this place called Dacha, which is the same place that I walked home from a while back, that time I got the big blisters on my feet. It was pretty crowded, so we decided to look for something else. Luckily, there happened to be a nice little pub-type bar right next door that nobody had ever seemed to notice, and there was plenty of space. We took over a couple tables in there and had a great time for a few hours chatting with the Brits. There was also a Russian girl named Alice (I guess her real name was Alisa or something more Russian, but she kept saying Alice and it made it confusing because one of the British girls was named Alice too) who had tagged along from the party and I talked to her for a while too. I think we all had a great time, comparing British and American slang and making fun of the other’s all night. Alice said that she was having a little party at her apartment the next night and invited us all to come, so we traded some fun numbers before everyone left. After last call I went with Bryce and Katie to KFC (because it was one of the only things open and we were hungry) and then shared a chasnik back to the island. My host-brother Alyosha was still up when I got back, hanging out in the kitchen and either getting ready for or having just come back from some sort of hockey game. I took a shower and went to bed. Friday was for the most part a normal day at school, except we had a make-up class in Gazeta for the day we missed way back on February 23 (Defenders of the Fatherland day). Some of the people in the class were trying to get everyone to skip, but in the end most of us went. We really lucked out, because instead of having class our teacher decided instead to just show us a movie. It was called “Ivan Vasilevich Changes his Profession” (Your supposed to know that “Ivan Vasilevish” was Ivan the Terrible). I really like the movie. It was about this scientist who makes a time machine in his apartment and opens a portal Ivan the Terrible’s chambers back in the 15th century or whenever he was around, and everything gets mixed up and Ivan the Terrible gets stuck in the present while the scientist’s Landlord and a thief who happened to be in the apartment get stuck in Ivan’s time. Yes, of course, hilarity ensues. There was a lot of cool music in it too. We didn’t get to see the whole thing, though. After classes were all over, I decided to go with Peter David to 505 to do a little music and movie shopping. We went to the one by Chernishevskaya, and Kenny and Stacey walked with us there on their way to the metro. We browsed for a while, and I ended up finding a copy of the movie we had watched for class, all on one disc along with three other movies by the same director (Leonid Gaidai). I’ve written before about all the crazy bootleg stuff you can buy in Russia, well it’s the same ting with movies. You can buy these DVDs that just have tons of movies on them somehow, sometimes as many as 10. They use both sides of the disc, but still it’s pretty impressive that they can fit them all on there. I need to buy some more collections of Russian movies before I leave. I also ended up buying an MP3 DVD of legendary Russian folk singer Vladimir Vysotsky (I’ve mention at least once or twice before here). This thing is insane: One disc (two sides), 119 albums (There are a lot of live performances and things like that), all for 120 rubles (about $4)! I know I’ll never really be able to listen to it all, but I was going to buy an MP3 CD of his that had just a handful of albums and would have cost about 150 rubles, so I figure why not spend less and just virtually everything he ever put out at my immediate disposal? I was a little worried it would be like the last Vysotsky DVD that I bought that only let you play it on a DVD player and not load any of it onto your computer, but I knew this was the real deal because it distinctly said “MP3 DVD.” Maybe it was a risk, but it definitely paid off. So, it was pretty cool that for about $8 I bought 4 movies and 119 albums. Peter David was headed to the book store, but I figured I should head home for a while so I could relax at home a little bit before going to the British party later. I rode the metro home and had enough time at the apartment to hang out for a bit and eat dinner. We were all supposed to meet some of the British girls at 8:00 on Vostannya Square, so I rode the metro back down there where a small group of us congregated when Jo and Amanda from England (well, Amanda is from Scotland) showed up and took us to Alice’s apartment. She had a really nice place with one other roommate, but he was apparently out of town so we all had the place to ourselves. The girls we had net the night before were all there, plus some more and a couple of guys too. Everyone was totally cool and I think everyone got along really well. A few more of our friends showed up at various points and at the maximum there were probably 8 Americans and about 10 Brits. We talked more about slang and different words in America and England. The tought us a ridiculous drinking game called “Gecko Master,” in which you have to “gecko” to a flat surface (basically just press ourselves against a wall or the ceiling or whatever). It was pretty weird. There was one girl named Precious. There was also a Greek-British girl named Olympia. We drank champagne and vodka and ate French fries (sorry, I mean chips). This one guy Oliver was basically telling us the history of Soccer (sorry, football) and told us about a big match coming up in St. Petersburg that we should really see. I really want to start hanging out with the Brits more often. I really like all of them pretty much. Their plan had been to go to this club called Ostrov later in the night, but me and most of the rest of the Americans didn’t really want to go (you know how I feel about “clubs”). Plus, I had made plans to hang out with Emily later that night, so when everyone left for the club (I think Bryce, Vickie, and Katie were the only Americans who went) I headed for that place called Swiss Bar where Emily was hanging out and waiting for me to come. Kenny decided to tag along with me. It was a decent walk down Nevskiy to get there, and it was pretty hopping when we arrived. I found Emily right away, and she was there with a few friends from her school. They had been there for a while it seemed and were having fun dancing and what not. Swiss Bar is kind of a weird place. A lot of lesbians hang out there and the bartenders are really butch lesbians, but it isn’t really a lesbian bar because there are always all kinds of people there. There isn’t really a dance floor, just kind of an open space in the middle of the room where people can dance around some, but it’s difficult because it’s on the way to the bathroom and the front door and there are always people trying to push their way through the dance floor. There were quite a few people there that I knew somehow, which seems pretty crazy to me. I guess I’ve been here long enough to start seeing the same people around town. Two of the returning students from CIEE were there, this guy who is my friend Christine’s boyfriend’s friend who I had had dinner with that one night at the Mexican restaurant was there, and later on this Australian guy named Tim who rides my bus in the morning showed up. I had fun talking to each of them for a little bit. I danced around to cheesy western music for a while and then cooled off at a table near the window for a while. I sat with Kenny, Emily, and Emily’s friend Jeff for a while, and Emily and Jeff were messing with Kenny for a while and telling him that they were in St. Petersburg to study taxidermy. I think Kenny thought it was really funny. Kenny got tired so he took a chasnik home, but I figured I should stick around and hang out with Emily more cause I hadn’t really seen her in a while. At one point this girl and guy asked me if they could sit down at the table while I was the only one there, and I said of course (this is all in Russian, of course). I asked her if she was too cold and if she wanted me to close the window, and she said yes. I kind of got the impression that they were foreigners, so I asked where they were from, and she said that she was Russian but the guy she was with was from the Netherlands. When I told her I was from America, she got really surprised and said she thought I was Russian all along! She said she couldn’t detect an accent in the brief interactions we had had. It was a pretty good feeling to be able to blend in that well, I don’t think that I had really ever been mistaken for Russian before then. She was really nice and I talked to her for a little while before some of Emily’s friends came back and wanted to sit back at the table, and the girl and the Dutch guy got up. These friends, I found out, were two Russian girls that go to school with Emily but that Emily had just really met for the first time earlier that day. They both spoke really good English, though. I was sitting at the table with just them for a while and it was really awkward because nobody was saying anything, so I tried to make small talk with one of them. Here’s how the conversation went:
Me: So, it’s Misha?
Masha: MASHA!
Me: Oh! Izvinitsia (“excuse me”).
Masha: What?
Me: I just said “Izvinitsia.”
Masha. Whatever. Are you having fun (said very unenthusiastically)?
Me: Yeah, I’m pretty tired though I guess.
Masha: Oh.
So, needless to say it didn’t take me long to realize that she was not worth trying to talk to, so I got up and talked to that guy Tim for a while. Aparently the dorm he lives in won’t let him in between the hours of midnight and 7:00 AM, so he either has to come back early or stay out all night. Guess which one he usually does. I danced around with Emily and Jeff some more when Matt Derrick showed up. I guess Emily had sent him a text message and told him to come. I haven’t seen him in over a month, so I was excited to see him and talk to him. We went down to the end of the bar and sat with some beers and talked for a long time. Whenever I go out to bars with Matt he always buys me beer after beer, sometimes without even asking if I want one. We talked about Russian music (mainly Kino, of course) and caught up and everything. I love talking with Matt. Emily was hanging around in between dancing too. Eventually her friends left and she stuck around with us. At this point it was about 5:00, 5:30, so I figured I’d just wait around a little longer and I’d be able to catch a bus back home instead of having to get a chasnik. We left about ten to 6:00 and walked down to Nevskiy. There were a few militsia members (poice officers, basically) on the street, and Matt said, “keep it down” before we walked by so hopefully they wouldn’t catch on that we were foreigners and try to hassle us. We got by them fine and Matt walked Emily home while I stopped at the bus stop to wait for a bus, obviously. Now, this next part is probably my best / worst story from Russia thus far. So, I’m standing on the street when those police officers I had mentioned (I assume it was the same ones) come up to me and ask to see my documents. I was a little bit drunk from the bar but not too bad. I could definitely maintain myself and keep my composure. We had all been told that police officers wanting to check peoples’ documents is fairly common in Russia, and I was actually surprised that I hadn’t been asked for them before. So, I wasn’t too nervous, because I knew everything should be more or less in order. My passport is currently being re-registered, as I had mentioned before, but I had my spravka (temporary identification) with me, so I gave that to them. While one officer was checking out the spravka, a third started padding me down checking my pockets. He opened my coat and went through all my pockets while the other guy kept me busy with his questions. What are you doing here? Where are you studying? Do you have any drugs or guns? Etc. The third guy just stood back and kind of watched. I could feel the second guy taking things out of my pocket and putting them back, but I was too focused on the guy asking me questions that I couldn’t really pay attention to what they other guy was doing. Plus, I didn’t want to interfere with whatever they’re doing because there are three of them and one of me, and I’m the foreigner who doesn’t really know what’s going on. At that point my biggest concern was that they were going to find my lighter/knife thing that I had bought in Moscow and have been keeping in my pocket. Luckily, they never found it. So, the guy finishes searching and the other one hands back my spravka and they say everything is alright walk away. Once they were gone, I go through all the things in my pocket to make sure everything is still there. I take out my wallet and look inside, and guess what. 1000 rubles were gone. That’s about $30. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Being pick-pocketed by a police officer? We had all heard stories of police officers asking for bribes or what not, but we were never warned of anything like this. Who terrible and horrifying is it to think that the very people who are supposed to protect you from this sort of thing are actually doing it themselves. I’m beginning to think that they might not have been real police officers, but their uniforms looked legit. I should have asked to see their badges or something, but again I was completely powerless in that situation. Seriously, what could I have possibly done I that situation? There is nothing you can do. So, needless to say I was pretty pissed of and immediately called Matt who was only a few blocks away at this point to tell him what had happened. He was sympathetic, but said similar stuff happens all the time and that, again, there’s nothing you can do about it. I like the way he put it though, now I have a great story to tell and it only cost me 30 bucks. So, tired and angry, I caught the number 7 bus, which, thankfully, came by pretty quick, and got home to the safety of my bed by about 6:30. I slept until about 12:30 the next morning. It’s hard for me to sleep much passed noon, so usually no matter what if I come back really late/early I won’t get much sleep. As long as I wake up naturally though I usually feel pretty refreshed. I told my host-mom about what had happened, and she thought it was pretty terrible, but as per her usual attitude didn’t really show much empathy towards me. I ate some blini with this delicious sweet caramel-y sauce, and then didn’t really plan on doing much for the rest of the day until Ruth’s birthday party that night. About 1:45, though, I got a text message from Peter David about going to Soiree, and I figured I could use some internet time so I decided to meet him there at 3:00. I took the metro down, and on my way out of the Ploshchad Vostanniy metro stop there was a police-officer guy standing around , and I got really paranoid. He stopped the person right in front of me and I slipped past really freaked-out. I think I’m going to be really paranoid of the militsia from now on. That, and try to carry less cash. So, I get passed that and get to Soiree before PD. The internet was working really well this time, and I was able to upload the rest of the pictures from spring break onto Flickr that I wasn’t able to get to earlier from the computer at school. PD showed up and we had some food and some drinks while I used the computer. I let him upload his pictures to Facebook too. Stacey showed up for a little while cause she heard we were there and managed to hijack my computer for a while. Stacey left and PD and I hung around for a while longer, then he left and then me about 15 minutes after him. We all had to get ready for the party I guess. On the metro back home there were these two girls standing right next to me making out like crazy while everybody tried hard not to stare, but it was hard because they were purposefully trying to make a big spectacle out of it, laughing and stumbling around and just so obviously trying to get everybody attention. I hung around at home for a little while, at some fish and potatoes for dinner, and then met with Vickie to head to the party. So, Nick and Sasha had this big party planned for Ruth that was limited to a small group of Ruth’s closer friends, and some of us were kind of put off by all the fuss that was made over it. They had all kinds of stuff planned and we all had to meet at a very specific time to be taken to Sasha’s boyfriend’s apartment where the party was, and a lot of was were worried that it was going to be kind of weird. Oh, and they called everyone and told them to bring cups because they couldn’t find any, and so of course everybody did and we ended up with about 200 cups for about 15 people. All the planning turned out to be much more fun and relaxed than I thought it was going to be. Basically, Nick and Sasha just kind of played MCs for the beginning of the party and had all these songs and little sketch things planned out, followed by Ruth-based trivia questions with prizes and a contest to see which group could make the best Ruth out of newspaper and tape. It was all actually really well planned out and fun, and I was very relieved that it wasn’t as confining as I thought it might be. Stacey had also written alternative lyrics to the Rolling Stones’ song “Satisfaction” and sang it to Ruth, and the lyrics and the delivery were brilliantly hilarious. So, after all the planned stuff it was basically like a normal party. I, actually, didn’t really have as great of a time as everybody else seemed to be having. I don’t really want to get into it, but I’ll just say that lately I’ve been feeling a bit alienated by some of the people from that group and so I wasn’t really being all that social. I was pretty drunk, and usually when I’m drunk I’m really jolly and sociable, but this time I got really bitter and anti-social and kind of tried to hide from everybody, which is hard because it was a really open apartment (It was an amazing apartment, though. The bathroom especially. It had a shower / tub that was basically a mini-swimming pool, and also a sauna). I sat in the hallway for a long time looking at the wall-map that Ruth had got for her birthday, and I think everybody thought I was being really weird. I was, but I don’t know, it’s hard to explain, I just didn’t really feel like mingling with them. Plus I was really afraid to leave the apartment on my own after what had happened earlier that morning, so I just kind of hung around being weird. Vickie convinced me to get up and leave with her and Tsveti, and after a while I agreed. I think everybody was pretty concerned about me and I was probably being a bit of a jerk, but I was just in a weird place. I leaned against the wall in the hallway and got covered in white chalky stuff because I forgot that walls in Russia are painted with really lousy paint that comes off on everything that touches it. I got a chasnik with Vickie and Tsveti that only cost 150 rubles, even though it had to go one direction to take Tsveti home and then all the to the other side of the city for us. I’ve paid more for that just to go to my place before. Oh well. So I got home and went to bed. This morning I had much less of a hang over than I thought I would. I didn’t leave the house all day today. I did some homework and watched some Pete and Pete and listened to some music. It was nice just to relax by myself today. I showed my host-mom my chalky jacket and she washed it for me. Hopefully it will be all dry by tomorrow. She had a couple of her girl-friends over this afternoon, and it was kind of funny to see them sitting around the kitchen table smoking and talking. That’s pretty much all that happened today. Tomorrow it’s back to school. I’m pretty anxious to tell Nathan about my run-in with the police and see what he makes of it. I also teach English tomorrow, which I am especially looking forward to because I haven’t been in about three weeks. So, that’s all for now. Catch you later.

Я люблю этот город, но зима здесь слишком длина

Alright. There’s a lot that needs to be said about the last two weeks, but I’m not going to be able to say it all here. I’m going to have to give a relatively succinct run-through of my spring break, otherwise this post would go on for pages and pages. So, we started on March 7th by taking a train to Moscow. It was fun. We rode “kupe,” which is the 2nd class train type and consists of a series of small, 4-bed compartments with walls and closing doors. I hung out in one compartment for a while and we watched Blue Velvet on Tom’s computer. Most of the people I watched it with didn’t like it. It was burning hot on the train so I slept very poorly, mostly trying to keep my head close to the window to get as much cool air as I could. We arrived in Moscow early the next morning and were whisked away to our hotel. It’s a big fancy new hotel outside of the center called the Hotel Cosmos, and it obviously caters to a lot of westerners. Actually, while we were in Moscow there was a big international track-meet in town and all the athletes were staying at this hotel too, so in the lobby (which was huge) and in the halls we would see athletes from all over the world, all usually wearing running jackets that say the name of their country on the back. So, we had a very international time at the hotel. After getting set up at the hotel we all got on the bus again and headed for our excursion to the Kremlin. There were guards at the gate and we all had to go through metal detectors. They almost didn’t let Tom in because he was wearing ripped-up jeans and that’s apparently too disrespectful. They finally let him in but told him something like, “you are a dirty and unpleasant person.” We went to the Kremlin museum, which had lots of relics from the Tsarist days like clothes and carriages and lots and lots of gold trinkets and stuff. Everyone was still pretty tired at this point and weren’t really interested in seeing all that stuff. Back outside we saw the cluster of famous churches inside the Kremlin, and it was pretty neat to see all of the together like that in the square. We went inside a few of them and I snuck some pictures. Back outside we saw the huge bell that had never been rung and the huge cannon that had never been fired. Soon thereafter the bus took us back to the hotel and I think most of us hung out there for the rest of the day. Oh, a few of us went to Sbarros down the street and walked through the weird market place area across the street. We had a lot of people over to our room (Mine and Matt’s) that night to drink and have fun, etc. Actually, our room pretty much became party central every night in Moscow. So, everyone had a fun time hanging out in the hotel. The next day we all got up early for our city tour. First stop was Lenin’s Tomb on Red Square. We had to go there first because people are only allowed in at certain hours and you have to go and wait in line for a while. So, we stood out in the cold for about a half an hour before they let us into the square where we had to walk straight to the mausoleum. There are no cameras allowed inside the mausoleum, so sadly I got no pictures of Lenin, but I definitely saw him. There are guards stationed about every ten feet inside, making sure you don’t talk or put your hands in your pockets. You can’t stop and look at Lenin either, you can only walk by at a steady pace or the guards will yell at you. But, it was worth it to see Lenin in the flesh (well, sort of). Outside of the mausoleum, against the wall of the Kremlin is where a lot of the great Soviet leaders and heroes are buried, so we got to see the graves of people like Stalin, Brezhnev, and Gagarin. We didn’t have tome then to linger in Red Square, so we got back on the bus for the rest of our city-tour. Moscow is an insanely huge, sprawling mess of a city, so I was completely disoriented the whole time we drove through it. I saw a lot of the Seven Sisters (these big buildings that are spread out throughout the city that all look kind of similar) including Moscow State University. We stopped at a cool vantage point and looked over the city. There were lots of souvenir tables there, and I ended up buying a flask and this really cool thing that is both a switchblade and a lighter in one. You’d have to see it to understand. We drove around the city some more and were finally dropped of near Red Square. We walked up to it to take lots of pictures of the square, the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral, the GUM department store and all the other famous things on Red Square. I followed some people to McDonalds for lunch and walked over to the Bolshoi Theater to see about tickets. I got back to Red Square soon afterwards to meet up with my Spring Break travel group so we could go but train tickets to Sochi. We ran into some Mormon missionaries and then slipped away to find a train station. We rode the metro and got out at a stop that had three train stations next to it. We chose Kazanskyi train station at random from the three because it doesn’t matter where you buy your tickets. After searching around the station for a while we finally found the ticket booth. We asked about the cost of various classes of trains and found that kupe would be about $100, while 3rd class (“platskart”) would only be about $30. So, it was a no-brainer. We all headed back to the hotel where a lot of the others were already waiting. That night was much like the night before it, hanging out in our room with some beer and vodka and having a good time. The next day a lot of us decided to go to one of the best art museums in Moscow, the Tretyakov Gallery. I had a great time checking out the art of lots of famous Russian and non-Russian artists. Sasha from Finland was there and it turns out she knows a ton about art, so she was giving me the background stories about all the different paintings and their artists. The Tretyakov has the world’s largest collection of Russian Icons, so that was pretty cool to see too. After the Gallery I broke off from my group to meet up with my friend Christine and her boy friend Blake. You remember them from my last entry, when they were in St. Petersburg and I met up with them for Mexican food. Well, this time we were in Moscow, so of course we had to meet up for Indian food instead. She told me to meet them next to the statue of Mayakovskiy, which I managed to find al right. I stood around watching a news team filming a segment nearby and kids skateboarding around the statue when Christine and Blake showed up. The restaurant was right across the street. I hadn’t had Indian food in months, so it was pretty great to eat there. We talked about our experiences in Russia and about people that Christine and I knew from back home, etc. It was a nice, relaxing time. I had plans to meet back up with the Tretyakov group later to see an opera at the Bolshoi, but I had a few hours to kill before then, so Christine and Blake suggested they take me over to the Arbat. The Arbat is a street and an entire district really that is known for its Bohemian lifestyle and cool artsy-ness. The folk singer Bulat Okudzhava wrote a song about it. We took the metro there and then walked up and down the street for a bit. It’s an old cobblestone street that is pedestrian-only and filled with booths and vendors. My favorite part was a wall down a side-alley that is basically a shrine to my favorite Russian band Kino and the late lead-singer Viktor Tsoi. There is tons of graffiti and lots of posters all over the wall, and a spot where people come to lay broken cigarettes in honor of Viktor (apparently they have a song about a brken cigarette, but I don’t know which one it is). I, of course, didn’t have any cigarettes, but Blake was nice enough to lend me one of his so I could break it and leave it on the pile while he smoked one. From Arbat we walked over to the Bolshoi, which was kind of a long walk but I enjoyed seeing more of Moscow. Once there, Christine and Blake took off while I waited for the others. They showed up and we went to buy the specially-priced student tickets. Guess how much a student ticket to the Bolshoi was. Nope, less. A student ticket was only 20 rubles, which comes to about 66 cents. Amazing! Granted, they were the worst seats in the house (4th balcony, along the side), but hey, how can you argue with 20 rubles? The play was La Bohem (how do you spell that?) and it wasn’t translated into Russian as I hear so many operas are. It was fun I guess. I’m not really into the opera that much. Luckily, we all desided after much hesitation to leave during intermission. Well, a couple people stayed. We got back to the hotel and did the usually partying in our room, except everyone cleared out early for my sake because I had to get up really early to catch my 8:00 AM train the next morning. So, after a decent night’s sleep I was off to my real spring break. There were 6 of us: Ingrid, Kara, Abby, John, Reed, and Me. We made our way through the Metro and got to the train station with plenty of time to spare. The platskart cars are basically open-compartments, meaning no privacy whatsoever. But it was fine, really. I had heard a lot of bad things about it but now I think I would choose platskart over kupe any day because you save so much. It’s arranged kind of like the kupe, with rows of bunks on the right running perpendicular to the train, and another row of bunks running parallel to the train on the other side. My ticket was for a top bunk on the perpendicular side, and I determined that I was far too large to be asble to fit in the top bunk comfortably. But when we left Moscow nobody was in the bunk below me, so I was beginning to think I might be able to take that spot instead. The same was true for the bunks across from mine, so it looked like we might have a whole little section to ourselves. We figured we might be able to negotiate with people to maybe switch spots and all get into spots that we liked, should more people come. Our first stop was in Ryazan, and wouldn’t you know it the owners of both those lower bunks got on there. The one who had the bunk below me was an unfriendly middle-aged woman who reeked of BO, and the lower bunk across from me was taken by a sketchy guy who kept reading a high-school biology book. I sat with them for a while, but when the stinky lady decided to start laying out her bed I managed to switch into Abby’s spot on the lower bunk across the aisle and back a row. It was probably one of the worst spots in the train, though, because it was right next to the door that leads to the bathroom and everyone was coming and going all the time. The train ride itself wasn’t that bad. I enjoyed looking out the window a lot, listening to music, playing cards a bit, and listening in on conversations. The sketchy guy got into a conversation with the rest of my group about how Americans have no culture, but I was too far away to really have any place in the conversation. There was a really nice younger women in the bunk above me and a couple of older women with a young girl across from me. The young girl had a bandage over her left eye. It was pretty hot on that train too, but not as bad as the one to Moscow. I was wearing shorts the whole time, though. Sleeping was a bit awkward and cramped, but I managed decently. In the middle of the night I awoke to find one of the two older women across from me putting a blanket over me, and I was a little freaked out at first but then realized how nice it was of her. There was a couple from Abkhazia (the break away region of Georgia that claims it is an independent nation but isn’t recognized by anyone. It’s just over the border from the Sochi area) who gave us their contact info and invited us to come visit them in Abkhazia. It would have been cool, but alas we were never able to do it. I woke up at about 6:30 just in time to see the train pull into the Krasnodar train station. This is the city where my Russian teacher Josh first came to when he was learning Russian, and I wish I could of seen more of it. Someday, I suppose. We still had about six hours to Sochi, but the snow was already gone by this point. It was a nice ride through the country-side, with lots of hills and forests everywhere, We stopped in the costal town of Tuapse and we got off the train for a second to find that this air was nice and warm (well, compared to St. Petersburg or Moscow) and we began to grow very excited for Sochi. It was a beautiful ride down the Black Sea coast to Sochi, and we got in right around noon. I had to use the bathroom really bad and the restrooms on the trains are always locked for about an hour before arrival. So I ran to the bathroom when we pulled into the station. Off course I had to pay, like at virtually all public bathrooms in Russia. When I got in I found that all the stalls are squat-toilets only. Apparently this is the case at all train stations throughout Russia. So, I had my first experience with a squat-toilet. Let’s just say it wasn’t fun. After that it was time for all of us to find a place to stay. WE decided we would try and rent an apartment, and lots of people came up to us who wanted to rent them to us. We decided to split into two groups and check out two different options before deciding on one. I went with Abby and Reed. This one guy took us on a marshrutka up into the hills of the town to this little condo place that was really clean and seemed really nice, but the location was pretty terrible. We told him we needed to go back and discuss it with the others, so we got back and decided that the apartment the others looked at would be better. They took us there, and it was an ugly communist era apartment complex, but the apartment itself was pretty nice, with our own kitchen, bathroom, and plenty of places to sleep. Best of all, it only cost us about $10 a night each. What a deal! After settling in we went to explore the town. We walked to the port where there were lots of fishermen on the docks. We waded in the Black Sea water and watched to sunset from a concrete jetty-thing. It felt so good to be there in the warm(ish) weather in a place that I had heard about for a long time and now finally got to see. When it was dark we headed back to the apartment and had a home-cooked meal of spaghetti. The next day we did more exploring. We walked along the Sochi river, through markets and a long the water some more. John and I went off for a while, and by the docks we saw a guy with a money in an army suit and a pistol in a halter. We posed for pictures with it and then realized that we had to pay the guy 100 rubles for it. It was worth it, though. WE walked further down along the water and found a great spot with more concrete jetties and wooden platforms. We tried to get back and walked down a small alley that ended up going for a long ways in a direction we didn’t want to go. We finally found our way back and hung out in the apartment for the most part that night. Oh, that day we had arranged to take an excursion into the mountains the next day, so the following morning we headed over to the train station to meet our tour guide Alexander. It was just us and a couple from Krasnodar in the van. We drove down to the town called Adler, which was so close to Georgia I could smell it. From there we took a turn up into the mountains to wards a little town called Krasnaya Polyana. This is right around where the Caucus Mountains begin, and they were very beautiful. I took a lot of pictures. In the town Krasnaya Polyana, Alexander took us to a place with honey and wine tasting. All of it was delicious, and we bought a jar of honey for our picnic lunch. The end of the line was at a ski resort that had a decent number of people skiing. Everyone in my group really really wanted to hike. I wasn’t all that desperate, but I figured I should follow them. There weren’t really any hiking trails because it’s just a ski resort, so we ended up hiking up the ski slope and then onto this muddy road up to the top of one of the runs. It wasn’t a very fun hike or anything, but there was a nice view from the top. There was a chair-lift that would have been fun to take to the top, but it was really expensive. Once we were at the top, John, Reed and I decided to see if we could ride it back down for cheap or free. The guy manning the lift was a younger guy who spoke a little English and was pretty friendly. When we asked him if we could ride, he asked if you had a ticket, and we said no, so he just flat out asked for a bribe (“give me money, please”). I think he wanted 100 rubles a person, which seemed a little too steep for us, so we decided we’d just walk back down. We had a nice picnic lunch of bread, meat, cheese, and of course honey, before we had to meet up with Alexander and the couple from Krasnodar. On the way back we stopped at a spot to check out a waterfall, which was pretty cool, as waterfalls usually are. We also stopped at a place that has mineral water coming out of a spigot, and the Russian men got their hair wet in it and took a drink. I tried drinking it, but it was pretty gross. The rest of the way back Alexander blasted pop music instead of speaking to us through his head-set microphone. There are a few Russian pop songs that I am getting to know well from hearing them all over here, and one of them is the theme song to this popular Russian show called “Not Born Beautiful.” Alexander played that one, of course. Back in Sochi we went to buy Bus tickets for the next day, and then went back to the apartment to relax a little while before heading out that night. When we were all ready we went out to try and find some sort of bar or club (I hate using the word “club” like this, but it’s what a lot of the places are I guess). At first we each got some beers and went down to the beach to drink and sit in the dark and look out at the water. The only kind of bar/club/whatever we could find was this place called Club Era that said “Strip Show” on the sign. There never was any strip show, but there was a pole in the middle of the dance floor. This place was pretty sleazy. There were a few women who were obviously prostitutes and a few older businessmen type here and there. Once people started figuring out that there was group of Americans in their midst we starting getting a lot of attention. I had a couple of Devyatkas (the 9% alcohol beers that Baltika makes) and a few shots so I was pretty drunk for most of the time we were there and I don’t really remember things linearly, but we met a lot of people and spoke a lot of Russian. There was one kid about 18 named Mark who told us his father was American, so he seemed to think very highly of us. He wanted John’s and My email addresses because he is going to come to America in three years (he has his mandatory military service starting in two months, which will take two years, so I’m not sure what he’s planning on doing for that extra year). Hopefully he won’t lose the cigarette box with our email addresses on it sometime before then. There were some sleazy older men that kept trying to dance with the girls. One of them told Kara she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. One guy apparently kept asking if he could kiss them, and when they told him “no” he asked me to ask them if he could kiss them. The bathroom at this place was outside and down the stairs and cost 5 rubles to use. It was disgusting in there, and of course it was another squat-toilet. At around 3:30 in the morning we decided to leave, but the girls had met this group of boys that wanted to take them to a tea house or something, so they went off with them and John and Reed while I went back to the apartment. I had discovered that I had lost one of the two keys to our apartment, so I got the other one form them, which meant I had to wake up when they arrived later to let them in. I was really hungry and tried to go to the McDonalds on the way back, but the walk-up window had been closed for about an hour. There were a few guys there banging on the window trying to get some service, but it was no use. Just down the street from the apartment I saw a couple walking, and the guy asked me, “Are you American?” and I said, “How could you tell?” Then I realized that they had been at the bar too and head seen me and the group. Their names were Maksim and Irina and they were very friendly. I talked to them for a while, I can’t really member what about, but I know that at some point Maksim started joking around with me that I was a spy and he was going to take me to the KGB. We parted ways and I got back to the apartment. Reed showed up soon there after. I was lying on my fold-out bed in the kitchen (that’s where I slept while we were there) I heard a knock at the door and assumed it was the others wanting to be let in. I got up and peeked through the peephole, not to find them, but some crazy white-haired man standing on the other side. I asked, “who’s there?” He said something but I couldn’t hear or understand him. I said “I don’t know you,” and in reply he said something about “girls,” and I had no idea what he wanted. I got a little freaked out and woke up Reed to ask him what to do, and of course all we really could do was not open the door, so I stood there looking at him through the peephole until he went away. Weird. A little later there was another knock and thankfully it was the others, so I could then sleep easy. The next day was a lazy kind of day because we were leaving on a bus at 5:00 in the evening, and we just chilled out for the afternoon. I went to the train station, got some food and used the internet. Back at the apartment, I remembered something about the night before that started to get me a little worried. At one point, when everybody else was up dancing, this older guy came up to me and started talking. Almost right away he showed me his militia ID (like the police), not in any kind of authoritative, official kind of way, but more as a conversation piece or something. We talked for a little bit and then he asked for my phone number. I really didn’t want to give it to him, so I told him I forget my number. Instead, he gives me his, and even transliterated his last name into Latin text (with my help). He told me that he really wanted me to call him tomorrow, and that he wanted to talk to me about something just for an hour or so. I said, “sure” or whatever, knowing all along that I was never going to call him. He left me alone and I didn’t talk to him for the rest of the night. What had me worried the next morning was that I remembered that I had told him that we were leaving the next day, and I had even told him the time and place and everything, just as a matter of conversation. Then I remembered that he was apparently a member of the militia, and I began to worry that I might make him really mad if I don’t call him, or that he might have wanted to talk to me about some sort of official business regarding our being in Sochi. Whatever his reason was, I still didn’t want to call him, and I just hoped that he wouldn’t be there at the bus station later that day with his fellow officers waiting for us. I didn’t tell anyone else about it. No need to make the others worry when they don’t have to, I figured. We got to the station with little time to spare, because we had to first help Reed figure out how he was getting back home (He doesn’t have a multiple-entry visa, so he couldn’t come with us to the Ukraine). We got there about ten minutes before the bus left, and there was no sign of the militia anywhere. Once we got out of the city I knew it was safe, and I was finally able to tell someone the story (Ingrid, who was sitting next to me). So, we left Sochi on a bus, headed for Port Kavkaz (Port Caucus), which is 13 hours away at the other end of Russia’s Black Sea coast. The road was through the mountains and really windy. There were a lot of clos encounters with other cars on some of the switch backs. It was pretty scary. The ride was quite uncomfortable for me, but I made it through alright. There were two drivers that took turns at the wheel, and Kara claims that she them with bottles of vodka and that they were drunk for most of the drive, but I didn’t notice. We went through the town of Novorosiysk, which is fairly large. We got into Port Kavkaz at about 5:30 in the morning. There is no town there, it’s literally just a Port. We were dropped off basically in the middle of nowhere with lots of industrial port-type stuff around, and we weren’t really sure what to do. Abby started laughing uncontrollable when she saw where we were. The only place to go was the ticket office for the Ferries. The door was open and there was a place for us to sit, but the windows didn’t open for a few hours. We were all freezing and tired, and with all my warm clothes on I laid on the bench inside and managed to sleep for a little bit. The window finally opened and we bought our ferry tickets, We waited around a little longer before it was time to board and then proceeded through customs. Everything was going smoothly until we got to the passport check booth. Everything was in order with our passports, but they would not give us back our migration cards with our registration on it. This is a very important piece of paper, and Nathan had told everybody to try and get it back from border patrol officers if they didn’t give them back to us automatically. In Russia you need to be registered in a place if you are there for more than 72 hours, and this piece of paper said that we were registered in St. Petersburg through the end of the program. If we didn’t get them back we would have to get them registered all over again, which apparently can take about a month, during which time we couldn’t leave St. Petersburg. So, they wouldn’t give us back our cards and we fought as hard as we could for them, but they wouldn’t budge. They wrote down our individual registration numbers for each of us and told us we could just get new copies once we got to St. Petersburg (Side note: Apparently that number is meaningless now without the actual migration card. I had to submit my passport and visa to be re-registered, but apparently it is only going to take a week, so it isn’t so bad after all). So, very frustrated, we were ready to get on a ferry and head to the Ukraine and get off of Russian soil for a while, They guy who works on the ferry was really excited to meet some Americans because he’s been studying English for the past few years in Novorosiysk. He even took us up to the control room to meet the captain. The captain had all gold teeth. It was a nice way to relax after the migration card fiasco (Another side note: it is about 1:00 in the morning as I write this, and I really want to finish but I feel like my writing is going to get sloppier and lazier as it gets later and as I get more tired. So, bare with me). It was a quick ferry ride, and on the other side everybody rushed to be first in line at the migration booth. We didn’t run, so we were last. When we finally got up to the booth, the officer was concerned that on the migration cards that we had to fill out we only listed “Yalta” as our destination. He claimed that we needed to have an actual address of a place we were staying. So, he kept all our passports while we waited for the everybody else to get through. He ended up being a really nice guy, and basically told us that we just need to pick some place that we will say we are staying at for the sake of the migration card, and he even helped us go through our guide book to choose a hotel. We picked one and filled it out on the cards, gave them back to him, and he stamped everything and gave it all back to us and we were on our way. It was the first of many pleasant experiences we were to have with Ukrainians. So, we went through customs after that really quick and were free to roam about the Ukraine. After exchanging our rubles for Ukrainian Grivna, we caught a taxi into the town just down the road form the port called Kerch. We at some food at a café near the bus station and tried to figure out how to get to Yalta. We decided a taxi might be the best way, because it would be much faster and more direct than taking a bus. We found a taxi driver and haggled him down to 500 Grivna for the 4 hour drive to Yalta (about $100, so only $20 each. Not bad at all for such a long taxi ride when you think about it). Our driver was named Misha, and he too was very nice. I sat in the front, of course, and everybody in the back got immersed in a big intellectual conversation that I was glad to not be a part of. The drive was nice. Eastern Crimea reminds me of Eastern Oregon a lot. We went through the capital of the Crimea, Simferopol, and then up into the mountains and down into Yalta. Misha learned that we wanted to rent an apartment, so he took it upon himself to help us do so. He found someone and started talking to them and making connections, and before long we pulled into a back street and checking out an apartment. The apartment was amazing, by the way. Again, we paid only $10 each per night. Here’s the crazy thing that happened: We had known that Peter David, Alex and Colleen were also staying somewhere in Yalta, but we had no idea where and no way to get a hold of them. As we were standing around on the alley / street thing in front of our apartment negotiating with the hostess and with Misha, who should come walking out of the building across the way but Peter David, Alex and Colleen! They were staying in an apartment just across the street! How crazy is that! So, we got to hang out with them for the rest of the time they were there (only about a day and a half). So, we got our apartment, settled in, and then hit the town with Peter David. We just walked along the waterfront area, which is really nice. We ate some “burritos” and “pizza” and some restaurant, bought a bunch of wine and hung out back at the apartment for a while. I got my own room in the apartment with one of the most comfortable couches I’ve ever slept on. The next morning I waked around town alone for a bit, checking out the markets and trying to find some food. I bought a few groceries from a market and the really friendly women who worked there helped me pick out everything. That day we all decided to take a trip up to Europe’s tallest waterfall, which was a short drive and a short walk from downtown Yalta. We had to take two cabs, and our cab driver asked us if we were Polish. Actually, several people in the Ukraine asked us that. I guess they get a lot of Polish tourists there. The waterfall was pretty cool. I mean, I’ve seen taller, coming from the west and all, but it was still pretty cool. There was this staircase you could climb to get higher up and right next to it, and there were tons of steps missing. Whole sections, in fact. So, You basically had to climb up the side of the steep hill pulling yourself up with the hand rail with the occasional step to help you along. From up there the waterfall was amazing and there was a spectacular view of Yalta down below in the distance. The rest of my group decided to go off hiking in the mountains some more, but I headed back to town with Peter David and Alex (Colleen had gone off hiking by herself for the day). Back in town we broke down and went to McDonalds. There is a statue of Lenin that looks directly at the McDonalds, which is pretty hilarious. We walked around town some more, checked out the “thing market,” walked along the waterfront some more, and then headed back to their apartment for a while because I didn’t have a key to mine. We watched Ukrainian TV, and after a while the others got home and I went back to my apartment. PD, Alex and Colleen had to leave the next day, so we decided to have a big dinner at our apartment that night. They brought over a pasta dish and some pelmeny. Abby made cheesy potatoes, John made some fried trout, and I threw in some pelmeny of my own. It was a huge feast! We drank shots of vodka with our food like real Russians. We stayed up for a while drinking, talking and watching Ukrainian music videos. The next day PD, A, and C went back home, but we had some more time to spend. We decided to go check out the palace where the big conference between Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt took place in 1945. It wasn’t that exciting of a palace, but it was interesting for its historical significance. From there we decided to take the 5 kilometer walk down the coastline to this little castle called the “Swallows Nest” that the tsar had made for his mistress or something. We went down the wrong path at first and had to turn around, but once we got on the right path it was a nice walk through the forest with lots of great views of the oceans. The others sang along to what seemed like every song they could all possibly know while I hung back and just listened. We finally made it to the castle, which seemed like a castle out of a cartoon or something and was really tiny. The location is awesome though, right on the edge of a cliff over-looking the ocean. All there is inside now is an Italian restaurant. We were all pretty hungry and decided to give it a go. The food wasn’t bad. We had asked them right off the bat if they accepted credit cards, and they did, but when it came time to pay there were problems. Nobody’s card would work and we didn’t have enough cash to cover the meal, let alone for the cab ride back to town. They said it was a problem with their machine. We sat around for a long time while they tried to get the credit card to go through, and after a while it looked like it wasn’t going to work. So, for a small fee, they had a driver drive us back into Yalta to find an ATM, get the cash and give it too him. It was great! They got their money and we got a cheap ride back into town. Everybody wins. That night, the rest of the gang really wanted to go out to some place called the Catcus Club, but I was so exhausted and not in the mood for a “club.” I agreed to come out with them for a little while, and we went to some weird restaurant to have a beer before we found the other place, but I decided to head back after that. We only had one key, so I had to make sure I would wake up when I heard them ringing the doorbell whenever they got back. It sounded like they had a fun time, but I really wasn’t up for it. At the apartment I watched a little TV and basically just went to bed. The next morning we all had to go buy train tickets. Ingrid and John had decided that they were going to continue on to Odessa, and I almost decided to go with them, but ultimately decided it was a bad idea and that I was ready to get back to Petersburg. I’m sure I’ll have the chance in the future. It turned out that they had to take a later that afternoon, so they ran back to the apartment and go tall their stuff together before heading out. That left just Abby, Kara, and me. We ate at a Turkish café and then bought our own tickets to Moscow and then form there to St. Petersburg (plastkart, of course, except the Moscow-Petersburg one, which was a special, fast (5 hours) seating car. Most of the rest of the day we spent in the apartment, occasionally going out for food or to try and use the internet at the internet center around the corner, only to be told there was no room because there were too many kids playing computer games. We were going to see a Russian movie called “Boomer” that night, but we got side-tracked with finally being able to get on the internet, and having to find a way to call our landlady and tell her we were leaving earlier than we had initially said. So, instead of the movie we each got some things to cook for dinner, went back to the apartment and watched more Ukrainian TV until it was time to go to bed. The landlady came earlier than expected the next morning, so we got everything together fast as she inspected the apartment. Everything looked good, so we were on our way. We walked up to the bus station and found a taxi right away that would take us the Simferopol (where the train station is). It’s a 1 and a half hour drive, and we got there with plenty of time to spare. We sat around for a while, got some food, and did some reading before it was time to get on the train. I had a spot on the train just like the kind I had had before, which was fine. There were friendly Ukrainians across from me and nobody in the bunk above me, so I was happy. At some point during the ride, some people got on who didn’t have assigned spots on the train. I finally figured out that they were going short distances and had to just find somewhere to sit for a while. There was one guy who sat with me in my spot for an hour or so, but it was still during the day so I wasn’t real anxious to lie down or anything. He got out in a town called Zaporozhe, and in that town more people like him got on. One guy asked if he could sit there and I said sure, thinking he’d probably only be an hour or so too. I figured he’d probably be getting off in Dnipropetrovsk, the next major city, which wasn’t too far away. This guy was pretty sketchy. He had prison tattoos all over his hands and his nose was ridiculously crooked. I figured he’d probably had it broken at least a few times. After a while I began to suspect that we weren’t going to be going through Dnipropetrovsk after all, because by then we should have been there. I checked the mad and saw that we had gone off on a different route completely that doesn’t even go through any big towns. So, I began to wonder, where’s this guy going to get off? It was dark by then and I was starting to want to make up my bed and lay down. He ended up staying on for about five hours. He got off at the Ukrainian border, for what I don’t know. Right when he got off I put the table down and made up my bed right away so that nobody else could come and keep me from laying down. The Ukrainian border patrol came in and looked at our passports, and of course everything was in order. They even had a drug-sniffing dog come in and check for drugs. The women across the way told another passenger that one time she had been on a train when they actually found drugs. We pulled out of the border check and about and hour and a half later pulled into the Russian border check at the city of Belgorod. They were much more scrutinous with our passports and visas there, but there were no problems in the end and we got them back just fine. I know have a nice set of stamps from Russian and the Ukraine all in a row in my passport. I bought some chicken from a vendor on the platform and the providnist (the guy who kind of runs the train car. Usually it’s a women, but this time it was a man) even heated it up for me. Ukrainians, I’m telling you. They’re so nice. Soon their after I went to sleep, and it wasn’t too long after I woke up in the morning that we were in Moscow. We had to go on the metro one stop to get to our new train station, and once there had about 4 hours to kill before our next train left. I walked around the crazy marketplace area outside with lots of bootleg DVD stands. Moscow is much sleazier than St. Petersburg. The DVD kiosks in Moscow are filled with crazy porn, but you hardly ever see it in St. Petersburg. I had another bad experience with a squat-toilet at the train station too. After a long wait we finally boarded our train and began the final leg of our trip. The train was really fast, and what is usually an 8 hour trip only took 5 on this train. I just sat and listened to music most of the time. It was pretty comfortable, as far as train seating goes. We got into St. Petersburg at about 9:30, and then began my trek through the city with my huge backpack. I waited in line forever to get a metro token, and then had to wait around inside a marshrutka with my bag for a while too. But, I got home just fine and I was quite relieved to finally be home. Well, it isn’t really home, but for now it is. And so ended my crazy 2-week spring break. There are so many little details I had to leave out, but all the good ones will surface eventually. Oh, by the way, I seem to have lost about 2 or 3 t-shirts on the trip. I don’t know what could have happened to them. Oh well. Today was back to school like normal. Everybody was telling stories of their vacations. My favorite is Vickie and Katie’s. They, not thinking, took a train directly from Odessa to St. Petersburg, not realizing that it goes right through Belarus, and when they got to the border they were kicked off the train and had a big ordeal getting back to Kiev and then to Moscow and on to St. Petersburg. They have Byelorussian stamps I their passports though, and now I’m really jealous. I went to Soiree after school with Tom, Katie and Vickie, even though I didn’t have my laptop. Emily happened to be there and I was so glad to see her because I hadn’t in so long. We made plans to hang out this weekend. I left soiree early to get home and work on all the homework I have, including my big essay for Civilization class on what my impressions of Russian society are. And, that brings us up to speed. It is now 2:19 and time for me to sleep. There are some fun things coming up in the next few days I think, so keep an eye out for blog posts about those in the near future. It’s good to be back. Take care everyone.

Where in the world is Austin?

I am in Sochi right now, using the computer at the train station's service center. Gmail won't load on this computer, so consider this a message to everyone that I am here and doing fine. We were in Moscow then we rode a train for 28 hours and have been hanging out in Sochi since. The weather is really warm. There are palm trees everywhere. It reminds me of California in many ways. I'll go into more detail later. Later today we are catching a bus to Port Kavkaz, then hopefully catching a ferry to the Crimean Penninsula (Ukraine) and making our way down to Yalta for a few days before heading back to Petersburg. We'll see how it all goes. So, that's all I have time for right now. I'm having a great time. Take it easy, everyone, and I'll see you soon.

"Do you have mayonaise in America?"

Busy busy busy! At least that’s how it feels right now. I have just almost exactly 24 hours before I leave for Moscow and I feel like I’m scrambling to get everything together and get everything taken care of before I leave. But of course, one of the most important things I needed to do before I left was to write a blog entry as per my promise. I guess I’ll pick up with Friday. We usually have two classes on Fridays but because of that holiday the other week we have some make-up classes scheduled, and one of them was Friday. So, after a long day of classes it was finally the weekend. After school, Vickie and I tagged along with Nick and Tom, who were going to Moskovsky Vokzal (the big train station) to buy a ticket back to St. Petersburg for after Moscow. They are going to Copenhagen for their spring break, for some reason, and they need to get back to St. Petersburg to take a bus to Helsinki where they will catch their (apparently cheap) flight to Copenhagen, This is the train station that we have to meet at tomorrow to take to Moscow, so it was good to see it before hand and know where to go. I enjoyed looking at the big time-tables in the station to. It was really exciting to see the names of all these cities that I know of in Russia, and to imagine that from here with all this information you could actually go to them all! So, while they were buying their tickets I just stared up at all those names and tried to make sense of how the schedules are explained. After the station we were going to go to that little café I know with the cheap beer and blini, but after getting side-tracked at a 505 store (I didn’t buy anything) and realizing how late it was getting, Nick and I decided to head back to the Island. We decided to take the metro instead of the bus because it would be a lot quicker, though not cheaper for me since I had to get a marshrutka afterwards. I hung out at home for a while before heading out again. The plan was for a bunch of us to go somewhere with Allisonn, because she hasn’t been out with us to any bars or anything yet and she’s been wanting to. She didn’t want to drink and didn’t want to go anywhere to crazy or anything, so we thought it would be fun just to relax at Kofe Khaus. I got to the metro station and waited around for the others to show up. Ruth and then Stacey showed up first and we stood around together waiting for the others. We saw this guy walking around whose face was completely and utterly beaten. I mean bruised, cut, bloody, and swollen, and virtually over every inch of his face. It was pretty scary to see. What’s even scarier is that he stood close to us for a little while and seemed like he was looking at us. He kept moving closer and closer over the course of a few minutes, and right as I said, “Maybe we should stand somewhere else,” he came up and started asking us for something. He was smoking a cigarette and had about half of the cigarette’s worth of ash hanging off the end of it. We kind of ignored him at first, but then I just looked up to him and said, “excuse me [us]” and we walked away and stood in another spot. He sort of disappeared after that, cause after we moved and looked back I couldn’t see him anywhere. It was really weird. Everyone else eventually showed up and we got to Kofe Khaus, where we got a table in the back room like always and had a fun, relaxing time like always. None of the usual waitresses were there, though. I had a beer and some blini with ice cream. I think Allisonn had a fun time, and we all hope that she will start coming out with us more often. Everyone had their cameras and we were all taking pictures of each other. There was a couple at the table behind us who were making out the whole time, so we took pictures of that too. As 12:00 approached almost everyone decided to catch the metro home. I still wanted to stay out and the only other person who did was Sasha, so we decided to head across the street to Choomadon for a while. I hadn’t ever really hung out with Sasha outside of school yet, so I was glad to get a chance. At the bar we talked a lot about small town life versus big city life, and differences between America and Europe (Sasha is from Finland). Unfortunately, our time spent at Choomadan was not entirely pleasant, because they screwed up our order almost entirely, and everything we ordered was either the wrong thing or never came at all. Sasha ordered some French fries and what she thought was a pirozhki (like a pierogie), as well as a glass of “fresh-squeezed” orange juice and two shots of cranberry vodka (one was for me, actually, because she didn’t want to drink a shot by herself). I ordered a beer and some grenki (the dark bread with garlic and cheese). So the waitress took down our whole order, and a little while later she came back and told us that they were out of fries and grenki. We got the menu back to try and order something else but decided to skip it in the end. The “pirozhki” was actually a piece of pie that was basically just made out of marshmallow. The shots were most definitely not cranberry vodka, and Sasha’s orange juice was most definitely not “fresh squeezed.” And my beer never came. We decided to leave and go to this little café that Sasha knew nearby that was 24-hours, so we asked for the check. Of course the beer was still on the check, so when the waitress came to collect the money I made sure to remind her that I never got the beer, so she shouldn’t charge me for it, and she nodded and seemed to understand. She brought my change back, and lo and behold she had charged me for the beer. I called her back when she came by again and informed her that she still owed me for the beer I never got. She said fine, left, and came back with 60 rubles. The beer was 70. I counted it, and informed her that she still owed me 10 rubles. Of course she was pretty pissed by now, but she went and got it and finally we were able to leave. She totally knew what she was doing the whole time, she was just trying to screw me over, but I wasn’t going to let it happen this time. This is the third strike for Choomadon, I’m not going back their anymore. So, Sasha and I walked down the street to find this 24-hour café, and when we found it we were quite disappointed to find that it was actually closed, despite the fact that it clearly said “24 hours” on the sign. By then, we both decided it was just time to go home. I walked Sasha another block to bridge, and she said she could walk the rest of the way fine. We made a deal though, that if she doesn’t call me after 45 minutes then I should call her to make sure she got home alright, and if I don’t hear from her or can’t get a hold of her I would call the program director and let him know something had happened. Of course, I got a call from her about half an hour later, so it was no problem. I caught a chasnik on Bolshoi for 80 rubles and got home for a good night’s rest. Most of Friday was spent at home, something I hadn’t done yet. I called around for a while to try and get a hold of someone to see if they wanted to do something, but everyone was busy or didn’t want to do anything or whatever, so I just stayed in all day. That night, however, there were big plans. It was Tom’s 21st the next day, so Katie and Vickie had planned for everyone to meet him a the metro station near his house, and then we would all go to this club nearby called Griboedova that’s supposed to be really cool. Once we got there, Katie and Vickie informed us that they had scoped it out and found out there was a 300 ruble cover, and nobody really wanted to pay that, so we decided to head to our new fall-back place, the Red Lion. We took the metro and then a bus and once we got there we found plenty or space in the back room. We all had a grand old time drinkin’ and dancin’ and eatin’ and talkin’ and all that. I got some delicious grenki to make up for the grenki I never got the night before. Tom ordered a “cyr-burger” (“cyr” is the Russian word for cheese) and the waiter thought it was hilarious. More people showed up later and at one point we pretty much twook up two whole booths, which are each pretty darn big. I think everyone had a really fun time. We met some Russian people sitting at the booth near us and talked to them for a while. At one point, a Russian guy from another booth across from us invited me over to their booth and I ended up sitting and talking with them for about an hour. All in Russian! Actually, they did use a few English words that they knew when they could, but those were really just the words “good” and “beautiful,” which they seemed to try to use whenever they possibly could. They were older than me, I think they were probably around 30. They were really friendly though, and were really patient with me when I didn’t know a word in Russian and they would take the time to try and explain it to me. They told me I spoke Russian very well, and they said they give me a “5” (The Russian equivalent of an A). We had some pictures taken together, but I’m not sure whose camera they were taken on. We exchanged numbers too, and they kept telling me that they would call me and we would relax together. They also said they were going to come to America on vacation sometime and they would call me. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that the number I gave them was, of course, only my number in Russia, and they certainly would not be able to reach me with it in America. While I was talking to them, most of my friends left, and by the time my new friends took off (their names were Constantine and Denis [Kostya and Den] by the way) there were only a few from our group left, so I took off soon there after. I walked down the street and over the bridge to get back to Vasilevskiy Island where I could catch a marshrutka for a lot cheaper than it would be from right outside the bar. I caught one in the same spot I had the night before and for the same price. By the time I got home it was about 5:00, so I hit the sack and slept until about noon the next morning. Sunday was actually quite busy and exciting. I had planned to go to this island-park in the north of the city for the big last-day-of-maslenitsa party that was apparently going on there. When I awoke their was a text message from Ruth awaiting me that said they were meeting at the metro station near the park at 1:00, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it by then, so I texted her back and we decided that I would just call them whenever I got their and we would meet up. I got up and had my usual weekend morning breakfast of blini and jam, and then headed out to meet them. I meant to go to Vasileostrovskaya metro, but I took a different marshrutka than usual and it didn’t stop their automatically like the other ones, but it continued on to Gostiny Dvor so I just waited until then and got off, Outside the metro station there was a small demonstration of about 10 or 15 old ladies holding Soviet Union flags waving pictures of Stalin and holding a big banner that I didn’t read all of and probably couldn’t have understood anyways (I did catch the word “reforms”), but it was pretty obvious to see what they were suggesting by their protest, There were lots of people gawking some police hanging around too. I managed to snap a couple of pictures. Down in the tunnel between Gostiny Dvor and Nevskiy Prospekt metro stations I saw another awesome sight. There were about 6 army veterans all dressed in camo, a few of them with missing limbs, and they were all singing folk-type songs to the accompaniment of two of them on guitar. It was really awesome. I wanted to stop and take pictures and/or video with my camera, but there were lots of people constantly walking by and I thought it might be disrespectful or something. It sounded really good though, and I wish I had a recording of whatever it was they were singing. Anyway, I rode the metro around, made some transfers, and ended up at the Krestovsky Ostrov metro station in the north part of the city, where I hadn’t been before. I called up Ruth and she gave me directions to where they were in the park, and I followed the crowds to the park entrance. I had forgotten my student ID so I had to pay the adult price (50 rubels versus 30, bummer) and crossed the big bridge to the park that makes up an entire island. There were tons of people and tons of activity, and I wonder how much is actually going on there when it isn’t maslenitsa. Anyway, Ruth had told me to take a right when I got in the park and to look for big amusement park rides. I took a right and walked for a long time and never saw any rides. I kept calling them again and again and trying to find the right place but just ended up further and further away. It’s a pretty big park, so it was kind of easy to get lost. There was lots of fanfare, and lots of kids were carrying around little effigies of old-lady winter on the ends of sticks made out of straw, presumably to be burned later. After wandering around forever and seeing the world’s most northerly Buddhist temple across the river, I finally stumbled upon the right spot and was finally able to meet up with them (Ruth, Matt, and Stacey). I joined them on their quest for food, but we kept getting frustrated with the long lines at all the vendors and kept moving along. They found a little indoor place that was selling food and got in line to by some blini, while I found a little place that was selling shish kabob outside with a short line, so I got me a little of that. The others were still in line, so I ate my thing and looked around for a bit, and when I got back they were just getting out of the line, having decided it wasn’t worth the long wait. We walked some more and they finally decided to suck it up and get into another line for some blini. I went with Ruth to another tent to get something to drink. I was originally planning on just getting a soda, but Ruth talked me into getting one of the huge 1.5 liter bottles of honey-beer that everyone seemed to be drinking because she was going to get one too. It’s amazing what you can get people to do as long as you do it with them. It hit me later just how much beer it was. It’s like three normal beers from a bar. It was crazy, but, with a little help from Matt and Stacey, I was able to finish it before we got back to the metro station later. But anyway, they got their blini and we sat around outside while they ate it, and then we all got really cold and decided it was time to leave. Well, first they wanted to ride the bumper cars with the tickets they had earned for getting stuck on a ride earlier ( wasn’t there for that so I’m not really sure what happened). After waiting in line for a while they decided it wasn’t worth it, plus Ruth had to go meet Tsveti for a play or something, so we all left. This is when the really crazy thing happened. As we were walking towards the exit there was this big group of people about our age laughing and having a good time, and I just assumed they were Russian. As we walked by one of them overheard us speaking English and asked us who we were and all that. We found out that they were from the ACTR Moscow group (a different study abroad program that I could have gone on too, actually) and they were on their St. Petersburg trip. One of them we found out is friends with Ingrid from our group and another is friends with Kara. We found out that they were going back to Moscow the same night we are going, so we all exchanged some numbers and made plans to meet up down there. Then, it hit me that they are from the same program that my friend Christine from UO is on. I asked them if they knew her and they of course said “yes,” and I was able to get her phone number from them! I had emailed her about a month ago telling her when I would be in Moscow but I never heard back and I didn’t know how else to get a hold of her. And then, out of nowhere, I run into her friends by chance and get her phone number! It IS a small world, after all. I tried calling her right away, but didn’t get an answer. We parted ways with our new acquaintances and headed back to the metro I went through all the crazy transfers and everything again, got to Vasileostrovskaya and then rode a marshrutka home. At home I tried giving Christine another call, and this time she picked up. She must have been pretty surprised to her from me out of the blue like that, and I explained to her what had happened. She said that her the friends she was with were going to go out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in a little bit and invited me to come eat with them. How could I turn down the opportunity to see my friend who I hadn’t seen in months AND have my first Mexican food in about two months all at the same time? Even though I was tired and had just gotten home, I decided to head back out and meet them. This meant another marshrutka ride and another ride on the metro requiring transfers. She had given me directions to the place, which is in a part of town that I don’t really know at all, but I managed to find it just fine and they were waiting for me inside. She was with a guy from her program named Blake who she is apparently dating, and they were with Blake’s friend John who is studying in St. Petersburg on some other program. It was great catching up and hearing of her time spent in Moscow and around Russia. She’s already seen a lot. She took a big trip around Eastern Europe, a trip to Volgograd and Kazan, and had already been to St. Petersburg once before this time. The food wasn’t quite as good as it is in America, but it still tasted amazing because I was pretty hungry and have been craving Mexican food for a while. We ate for a while and sat and talked and all that while this huge group of young ladies who looked like they were having a bachelorette party or something sat at a big table next to us. When we were about to leave, the restaurant started blasting Latin music at an obscene volume and a bunch of the girls got up and started dancing in the open area in the middle of the restaurant. It was so loud that we could barely hear each other. Emily called while the music was playing, because I had tried to get a hold of her earlier to see if she wanted to join us for dinner. I had to call her back from outside because it was so loud in there. We paid up and headed back to the metro. I was invited to go a bar with them, but I really had to get back and do some homework, so I declined. I parted ways with Christine and Blake and made plans to meet up with them in Moscow, then John and I headed down into the metro. We rode the same line for a while and even made the same transfer, but then at Gostiny Dvor he went one way and I went the other. I didn’t get his number or anything, but who knows, I might see him around. A rode back to Vasileostrovskaya, rode another marshrutka, and was finally home for the evening where I had to start writing my 30 to 40 sentence essay for grammar class. That took me until about 2:00, so I got to bed pretty late last night. Today I went straight home from school to try to get some work done before heading to the other university to teach English. I managed to reread that one text for gazeta and look up all the words I didn’t know, but it really did take me about two hours. I caught a marshrutka over to the university and ran into Bruce, Stacey and Matt who were also their to teach to there classes. We talked for a bit before heading to our own classes. There were only four students in the class today, but I had to listen to each of them re-tell the little story about the journalist going diving with sharks that we had read last time. One student, Olya, mispronounced the name of the movie “Jaws” in her re-telling, and it sounded like she said “Jews.” So it was like she said, “thanks to the movie ‘Jews,’ sharks have a reputation of being cold-blooded killers,” and I had to keep from laughing. The teacher told me that I should tell them some about US Presidents, and that basically lead to a whole discussion of the structure of the US government and the election process, as well as small lessons in US history. I’m not sure if they understood everything I said or not, but they seemed interested enough. I tried to tell them about Mount Rushmore and even drew a cheesy picture or it on the board with just smiley faces, and then Olya pointed out to me that there was a picture of it on the front of her little notebook, so I could use a real visual aid. I taught them such great terms as “electoral college,” and “speaker of the house,” and told them about different political parties in America. It was all very fun, as usual. I felt bad telling them that I won’t be able to come to class for the next two weeks, but the teacher told me “we will be waiting for you” afterwards, so that was nice. I rode the bus back home and had some dinner when I got there. I talked to my host-brother Alyosha at the dinner table for a little bit about Moscow and Russian music. I think it’s the most I’ve talked to him so far. You know that show on MTV hosted my Nick Cannon where all the rappers do improv rapping and acting and all that? Well, that show was on, dubbed into Russian, and it was completely ridiculous because none of that kind of stuff would translate well at all into any other language. Alyosha told me it didn’t make any sense to him. Anyway, that brings us up to speed. I have to start packing and getting my stuff together for tomorrow. Again, you won’t be hearing much from me here for the next couple of weeks, but I’ll let you know all about it when I get back. Take it easy, everybody!

A candy colored clown they called the Sandman

Time to write. Some pretty fun things have happened in the past few days. Let me tell you about them. Tuesday, of course, I had been invited over to Nick’s apartment by his host-mother to eat blini for Maslenttsa, the big blini-eating holiday that is going on this week. We rode 147 all the way out to his part of the island with some of the other students that live near him. I was expecting just a few blinis, just something small, but his host-mom pretty much had a whole meal waiting for us. It started out with a bowl of borshch, then two blinis with meat and rice for each of us, then a little “salad” of pickled carrots and cabbage with garlic, and then a huge stack of more blinis for Nick and I to share and eat with jam. We couldn’t finish the stack, that’s how much it was. We also had water, apple juice, and tea to drink with it. It was all very delicious. After our feast we sat in the living room with his host-mom and chatted for a while. I’ve said it before, but I really like Nick’s host-family situation. His apartment is very nice and his host-parents are really friendly and eager to talk and help Nick with his Russian (his host-mom anyway) Just the little bit of talking I did with her there made me feel like I was really learning to converse better in Russian. It makes me wish that my host-mom was more eager to have conversations and more willing to help me with my Russian. Tonight at dinner I tried asking her more questions than usual but she would usually just give a short response and then get sucked back into the TV. TV really does dominate her life and the lives of my host-brothers (when they are here, anyway) and she really doesn’t seem to know much about culture beyond the things she sees on TV. It’s kind of sad, actually. But anyway, Nick’s place was a lot of fun but I had to get going so I could stop in at home for a little while before going out again. Tuesday was Ingrid’s birthday, so there was a big “surprise” party planned for her at the Red Lion pub at 9:30. I also wanted to get a hold of Matt and/or Emily, because I knew it was Matt’s “free” night. At home I had to tell my host-mom that I didn’t want a big meal because I already ate a lot at Nick’s place. She seemed a little annoyed but I don’t think it was a big deal. She just didn’t give me any soup with my dinner. Afterwards I tried getting a hold of Matt and Emily but had no luck, so before it got too late I caught a marshrutka down to Nevskiy. I even managed to catch the same one Bryce and Katie were already in. After a bumpy ride we got off on Admiraltaya Naberezhnaya and walked down to the Red Lion. We were the first ones there so we grabbed a couple big tables in the back. More and more people kept showing up and eventually Ingrid and her little crew arrived and the real party got going. Tuesdays girls get free champagne all night long, so the bartenders kept coming around and refilling all the champagne glasses. Quite a few of us were there, including some people who have yet to go out to the bars here and it was a lot of fun to get a chance to hang out with them outside of school. Kelly and Michelle showed up and I think neither of them have drank in a while, and while Michelle kind of took it easy and didn’t really get too drunk, Kelly went all out. She must just have a really low tolerance to alcohol after not drinking for such a long time, because after a few free champagne’s she was completely wasted and saying the most hilarious things ever. She’s usually very quiet and shy in school, but she just went crazy and was talking with everybody and being really loud and a lot of fun. She kept telling everybody that they were “too sexy” like that Saturday Night Live sketch where Christ Katan would play Antonio Banderas. She also kept going off about how the orange zest (peel scrapings) is the most expensive part of an orange. She was just hilarious. Michelle seemed to be loosening up and having a good time too, so I’m glad they were finally able to come out to the bars with everyone and I hope they get the chance to do so more in the future. But, all in all, I think everybody had a really great time at the bar. I got a call from Matt at one point and he said he was meeting with someone and that he might swing by and meet me at the bar later, but he never did. A lot of people (yes, including me) got pretty darn drunk from all the free champagne floating around. I certainly drank my share. There were a fe champagne glasses on our table and I would have one of the girls get it refilled for me and just drink that all night. I had two beers but mostly it was just champagne, even though I don’t think that guys were even supposed to be drinking it. One of the waiters caught James drinking some and got mad at him, but luckily nobody saw me. There was a dance floor and we all went dancing for a while. Wednesday was Peter David’s birthday, so at midnight we all yelled “happy birthday” for him and the party kind of became for him too. I had a really fun conversation about sports with him, which was really fun because I don’t know anything about sports and all I was really doing was trying to convince him that all the sports teams from the state of Michigan (where he’s from) suck. Of course I didn’t mean it and he took it all in great fun and played back at me. I remember him saying, “at least admit that the Detroit Pistons are the greatest basketball team of all time. At leat admit that!” and I thought it was hilarious. It was one of the craziest Tuesday nights I’ve probably ever had, and I really did have a good time. I didn’t bring my camera for some reason but I really wish I had, because a lot of other people took a lot of good pictures and I wish I had some of my own. At about 3:00 those of us who still remained decided to finally go home, so after getting everyone together and figuring out everybody’s rides I finally got into a chasnik with some other people from the island, and by the time I got home it was close to 4:00 and I was still pretty drunk. But, I was still determined to get up and go to school like normal the next morning, and I’m happy to say I managed just fine. A bit hung-over, but I got up and could function just fine off of the 3 and a half hours of sleep I got. It was pretty hard to get through classes on Wednesday, though. We all gout our passports back on Wednesday too, which means we are now free to travel anywhere we please. We got our multiple-entry visas, which allow us to come and go across the Russian border as many times as we want until it expires. Unfortunately the new visas are not pasted into our passports like our first visas, but these inconvenient separate forms that we have to keep with our passports. It’s kind of annoying, actually. At least I have the one already in there, and hopefully by the time I get back to the U.S. my passport will have all kinds of crazy stamps and such in it. After classes we had a scheduled group excursion to the Yusupov Palace. I wasn’t all that excited about it, but I have to admit it turned out to be pretty cool. The Yusupovs were one of the rich noble families in Tsarist Russia, and this was their main residence in St. Petersburg. You can imagine the opulence. Crazy chandeliers, statues, furniture, artwork, decorations, etc. It was all pretty darned impressive if you ask me. The most interesting part, however, was the fact that this is the palace where Rasputin was killed. We got a little background from the tour guide, and apparently the Prince Felix Yusupov and some co-conspirators thought that Rasputin was getting too powerful and had a plot to murder him. I remember hearing about this in 7th grade. They poisoned him and shot him but he wouldn’t go down, so they finally drowned him in the Moika canal across the street. It was pretty neat to see the place where that all went down. Of course you had to pay to take pictures here, but I felt like it was too risky to play my little game this time, because I group was pretty small and the babushkas were well proliferated throughout the palace. I did manage to get one picture of the wax figures of Felix and Rasputin in the cellar. Peter David got a little more adventures and played a round of the game himself, but lost the game at the last minute when a babushka approached him and asked if he had paid, and he played dumb and said he didn’t know you had to. The babushka was mad but couldn’t really do anything about it, so I guess P Diddy came out the winner in the end still. A lot of us wanted to head back to Smoliny after the excursion because we heard there was supposed to be a Maslenitsa party. The bus took forever to get there and by the time we got back all the blini was gone, but we did get there just in time to see them burning the effigy of Old-Lady Winter. Actually, by the time we got there most of the effigy had already been burnt away and it just looked like a flaming cross, which is funny because it was right in front of a cathedral. I took some good pictures. I had promised to Peter David that if the blini was gone when we got there that I would go with him to KFC, so of course that’s what we did. We stopped in at a 505 store afterwards where I was determined to buy a bootleg copy of Blue Velvet after having passed up the opportunity before. Not only did I find a copy of that, but they also had a bunch of copies of “Industrial Symphony No. 1” the weird performance-art piece that David Lynch had directed and produced that I think was only ever performed once but was filmed and released on video. It’s only available on VHS and really hard to come by in the USA, but there they were, about 5 bootleg copies on DVD right there in the 505 store. How could I turn that down? So, I bought those, parted ways with P Diddy and Matt (oh yeah, Matt [not from Oregon] was there too) and rode the bus back home. I was so tired at this point that I was falling asleep on the bus. Luckily it wasn’t too crowded and I could find a seat alright. At home I watched Blue Velvet and did a little homework before taking a shower and going to bed. Today was Thursday, which means it was the worst day of classes. In gazeta class our teacher got mad at us because none of us had read the text that we had had for homework while consulting a dictionary for the new words. If I were to look up every word I didn’t know it would take me about two hours to read that text. Does she think we don’t have anything better to do? We were all pretty annoyed by that, but she was pretty pissed. I kind of got a dirty look from her in the hallway later. In civilization class we watched a documentary about the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova that was pretty cool. It talked some about the Siege of Leningrad in WWII and made me want to read more about it. After classes I went with some people to Soiree so we could discuss our spring break plan. After not knowing where or with whom I would be traveling, I decided it would probably be best to stick with a group at least for the beginning of the trip, so I went with the Sochi group. This is the basic plan as it stands right now: when we get to Moscow we will all buy train tickets to Sochi. Once we get to Sochi we will decided where we each want to go from there. The group consists of John, Reed, Ingrid, Abby, Kara, and Myself. One member of the group (Reed) had some visa issues and as a result was not able to get a multiple-entry visa, so he can’t leave Russia and get back in, therefore he has to stay in the country. I had the idea of going down to Georgia for a little bit and I think some of the others would be interested too, but then most of us want to head over to either Odessa or the Crimea after Sochi, so we have to leave time for that too. Ideal I would like to go to Tbilisi, Sochi, and Odessa, but in order to do all of those you would have to start either in Odessa or Tbilisi because Sochi is in the middle, but we have to start there because not everyone can go to Georgia or the Ukraine. So, I’ll be happy if I get to see at least some of both Georgia and Ukraine, though it looks like I probably won’t be able to make it all the way to either Tbilisi or Odessa. But you never know, Some of the people in the group are pretty adventurous and are really into the idea of playing it by ear, so we may even end up going somewhere completely different. The only thing we know for sure is that we are starting in Sochi. You’ll have to wait for a few weeks or so to find out where we really end up. Pretty exciting, huh? So, after Soiree most of us went to Gostiny Dvor to meet up with some other people to eat some blini. I guess there had been an invitation to our group from these two Russian girls who had helped out at our orientation to go out for blini today, so there were about 8 of us total who met with them and they took us to the blini place. I thought it was going to be some cool little place that only locals know about, but instead they took us to this place called Chainaya Lozhka (it means “tea spoon”) that’s basically a Russian fast-food place. It was really packed, so instead they took us to this other Russian fast-food place called Teremok (I don’t think it means anything). This is actually the same company that runs a lot of the blini stands around the city that I sometimes eat at. We all got some blini and sat and chatted with the Russian girls for a while. The one who was sitting at the same table as me (Olga) said that Sochi is a really good spot for spring break. She spoke English really well so it was easy to communicate. After a while we all headed out, and Bryce and I caught the number 7 bus right outside of the restaurant. Right now I’m just chilling in my room and I really want to watch Blue Velvet again but it’s getting kind of late, so I might just go through and watch the scenes with Dennis Hopper in them because he is so brilliantly horrible in that movie, and I’ve been thinking about some of his lines all day. There’s some fun stuff planned for this weekend, and I promise I will get at least one more post up before I take off for Moscow next Tuesday night. Between the Moscow trip and travel week I will be gone for about two weeks and therefore will not be able to make any big posts like these for that time. I’m sure I’ll be able to stop in to an internet café somewhere along the way, but I certainly won’t be able to right any of my normal long-winded entries. I’ll try to make some short updates if I can to let everybody know where I am at least. I can’t believe how soon that whole trip is. Anyways, take care for now. Catch on the flip side.