Я не могу успееть в шесть

So It looks like another week has gone by again, and it’s time to recap its events. I think I’m going to try to be somewhat concise this time, because I really don’t want to be writing for four hours like I did last week. So, let’s start with last Tuesday. I can’t remember exactly, but I’m fairly certain I went straight home after school to rest up before the Red Lion like every Tuesday. The Red Lion was good as usual, all the same faces and what not. 05 New York City was there again, so Katie roped Peter David into playing her fake boyfriend for the evening to keep him away. I think it worked pretty well. Anikan was there again, and I always like talking with her. Emily showed up a later on with her mother and boyfriend who had just gotten into town. I know him from UO, and he’s been studying in England for the year. He took a train from London to St. Petersburg, including a trip through Belarus and a four-hour stop in Minsk. Lucky bastard. Although, it may not have been worth the $200 for a transit visa. Apparently he was supposed to come earlier, but his train was canceled because a house fell on the tracks or something. What a continent. All in all, a pretty standard night at the Red Lion, so I don’t think I really need to elaborate much more.
On Wednesday I had been hoping to get some exploring in before going to teach English, or maybe even finally going to the Hermitage, but I ended up being introduced to Vickie’s parents who are here visiting and they invited me to lunch with them, Tom, and Katie, so I had to oblige them. How could I pass up a free lunch? I had always heard there was no such thing, but apparently there is, So, we walked to the bus stop and were planning on riding it to Nevskiy to go to some lame restaurant called Propganda, but the number 5 trolley-bus ended up making an unexpected turn and took us by the Chernishevskaya metro station, where I suggested we jump off and go to the Uzbek place nearby instead. We walked to the restaurant and found it completely packed with nowhere to sit. One of the tables was occupied by none other than our friends and fellow program members Peter David, Kenny, Sasha, and James. It was hopeless getting a spot, so we decided to try some other place nearby. We ended up going to this cheesy wild-west themed restaurant called Montana that had pretty sub-par and altogether very Russian food, despite their best attempts at serving real western cooking. Vickies parents were really great and extremely Greek. Well, her dad is at least. I understand her mom moved from Greece to America when she was very young, so she was pretty Americanized, but her dad was basically born and raised in Greece and it really shows. It really is just like out of the movie, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” Every other word we said, Mr. Tsombanos whould point out, “that’s a Greek word.” Apparently he gets very emotional and cries a lot too. I really enjoyed hanging out and eating with them. And of course, I didn’t have to pay for any of the food. After lunch I had to take off to get to my English class on time. I walked to the university from the nearest metro station (Gostiny Dvor) and on my way past Palace Square I had to stop and check out what was going on. The square was filled with various factions of the Russian armed forces standing in various formations marching to various music or just standing there in formation. They had soldiers standing all around the square not letting any civilians in. I asked one of the sailors who was standing guard what was going on and he said they were all practicing for the big Victory Day parade. Victory Day is May 9th, so they really are getting a big head start on that. I also saw a big group of soldiers marching down the street in between traffic. I passed a souvenir stand that was selling little framed portraits of famous Russian celebrities with a pen that had the same picture on it. I found one of Viktor Tsoi and of course had to get it. It was the best 25 rubles I’ve ever spent. Anyways, in the English class, they were working on a chapter about advertising, and so we did a lot of exercises with a text about a famous Levi’s ad from England in the 80’s. There is this one women in class named Yulia who is apparently 27 (I would have guessed at least 30) and is an economics professor, and she is kind of like the really out-spoken know-it-all of the class, and I think all the other students resent and just generally dislike her. In response to the question, “If you were to make a jeans ad, what would it be like?”, she gave a big long-winded answer describing her ad in great detail, which included two parts: the first part would show women wearing the jeans and working in a coalmine (“digging for brown coal,” as Yulia put it), and the second part would show a pregnant man (I assume he would be hearing the jeans too, but I don’t know how) standing in the kitchen with a pan and a baby carrier. Then, there would be words on the screen like, “One in the same,” or something like this. But then, Yulia insisted that, “I am not a feminist.” Pretty strange. Another student, Ludmila the German professor, happened to bring in an issue of an Austrian magazine that had a jeans ad in it just to show me because that was the topic we were discussing. The ad featured a bunch of topless women covering their chests with their arms and wearing the jeans in question. Ludmila seemed to think it was very funny that she was showing it to me and seemed quite interested in knowing what I thought of the ad. I taught them the saying, “Sex sells,” and the whole thing felt kind of awkward. At one point, things got a little tense between Yulia and the Biology professor Sveta. Sveta said that she usually writes about one scientific article a year in English without an editor or any native speaker looking over it. Yulia found that very interesting, because she hopes to be able to write articles in English but said that she would need someone to look over it, and when she found out that Sveta does them on her own, she asked her, “Then why do you make mistakes in class?” Sveta got pretty annoyed, which is quite understandable. Yulia shouldn’t have said that. Sveta defended herself by saying that it’s much different to write a scientific article than to speak conversational English, and in general just got really defensive. She is a bit shy in class and tends to make some mistakes here and there, but it’s nothing too big. Yulia does speak very well and at great length, but it’s just because she is much more confident and confidence is really a big part of speaking a foreign language, I’ve come to find. Anyway, the class was a bit strange but very interesting nonetheless. Marina was not in class so I didn’t have anybody to talk to on the bus ride home. After dinner I studied up for my grammar test the next day, took a shower and hit the hay.
On Thursday I took that grammar test (found out today that I didn’t do so great. Oh well, it happens), went to my other classes, etc. After class I decided that I really wanted to go check out this big book market that our conversation teacher had told us about. I got Kenny, Stacey and Matt to come with me, but Stacey and Matt dropped out before we could get on the bus because it was already getting kind of late. But, Kenny stuck by my side. We had to ride the metro to an obscure station that I had never been to before and then walk a few blocks to find this place. It was all indoors, much to my dismay, but it was still pretty cool inside. There were lots of booths set up selling all kinds of books for really cheap, as well as some CD and DVD stands and lots of jewelry places. Kenny left after a little bit because he was getting tired and wasn’t that interested in the books. I stuck around a little while longer and ended up buying a few things. I got a thick little book that had lyrics to hundreds of Russian folk songs by tons of different Russian bards (the folk-singers of the soviet era), and then I bought a couple of novels by some Russian authors that I like. Yes, they are in Russian, and no, I won’t be able to read them all the way through yet, but once I get better they will be really good learning tools. The two novels were “Camera Obscura” (yeah, like the band) by Nabokov and “Heart of the Dog” with two other shorter works by Bulgakov (Ok, not really a novel, but you get it). Most of the booths were starting to close up so I got back to the metro and rode to Sennaya ploshchad and then walked from there to St. Isaac’s cathedral where I was supposed to meet with Vickie, Tom and Katie to go out to dinner with Vickie’s parents again. I walked down some streets I hadn’t been before and sat outside in the nice-ish weather in front of the cathedral for a while before it was time to meet. We all found each other and Vickie’s parents met us there and we all walked to a Greek restaurant that they had already been to once. I was prepared to be there all night dancing and drinking Greek-style, but it turned out to be much more low-key. There was a band but they didn’t paly for very long, and a lot of it was classier French stuff and not fun danceable Greek music. I almost ordered a salad that included camel meat, but ended up getting the salad bar instead. The food was really good and I even got to drink a couple Pilsner Urquell’s, which I hadn’t had in a long time. II sat next to Vickie’s dad so I ended up talking to him a lot. He is a really great guy and had a lot of interesting things to say. It was Vickie’s mom’s birthday, so we had some birthday cake and everybody was having a good time. We ambled back to Nevskiy with them afterwards and caught a bus while they went back to their hotel. At home I probably did a little homework and then went to bed.
Friday was a pretty fun day. After class I went with a bunch of people out to lunch after school. I was kind of thinking of going to the Hermitage again, but again I got side tracked and ended up going with other people to do something else. I’m determined to go this Wednesday, though. I walked with Peter David and James behind everybody else. This was really weird: James told us about how he went out to the outskirts of the city the other day and got a prostitute. Peter David swears he was joking, but he seemed pretty serious about the whole thing to me. James is a pretty strange guy, to say the least. He’s going to Kazakhstan for the summer and had to go pick up his visa at the Kazakh consulate, but decided to come with us first. Everybody finally met up on Nevskiy and we went to the fast-food bliny place called Teremok. The bliny was good, as usual. We all sat in the restaurant for a while afterwards, and once we all left I convinced Peter David to come next door with me to Dom Knigi to check out the map room some more. I didn’t buy any maps, but I always enjoy looking at them. We walked around the rest of the store and I found a book that had lyrics with sheet music and tabs to some Kino songs, which I of course had to buy. Anything for Kino. We each went home afterwards and I did some nice relaxing in my room before going out to meet everybody again. The plan for the night was to go bowling at this big hotel way out near Primorskaya metro on the other side of the island. They had all gone the weekend before when I was in Helsinki and they all wanted to go again. It’s called the Hotel Pribaltiyskaya, and is definitely the Hotel Kosmos of St. Petersburg. They had a little 4-lane bowling alley downstairs and we took over two of them. There were tons of us there, and probably about 6 or 7 people bowling on each lane. We bowled only two games which, because of all the people, ended up taking quite a while. All the usuals from CIEE were there, plus a few of the Brits and Anikan. Everybody was having a good time, and after our time was up we all made it outside where everybody somehow broke up into small groups going off on various quests for food and/or shelter. It was quite cold out considering how warm it’s been lately, so we huddled together and wandered around Korablstroitelei street. I was in a group with Katie, PD, Ruth, Nick, and Kenny. We stopped by Nick’s apartment to get a hat for Ruth, and then walked down to the Primorskaya metro station to find a shaverma stand that was open. We found it and all stood on the street eating shaverma. Shaverma is this delicious food from the middle east that is really popular in Russia and can be bought from kiosks all over the country. They basically have this huge chunk of meat that is cooked on a big skewer, and then they shave pieces off of it throughout the day, put it in a pita or tortilla-type thing and add a special sauce, some cabbage, sometimes cucumbers and tomatoes and sometimes even French fries. It’s amazing. I’ve been having a lot of it lately. We finished our shavermas and then decided against staying out all night, and everybody either walked home or took a chasnik from there. I shared one with PD and Ruth. At home I probably listened to music for a while and fell asleep.
For Saturday, Nick, Kenny and I had decided to go to that market that I had already been to with all the CDs and DVDs. Peter David decided to come along in the morning too. The night before we had all agreed to meet the next day at Vasileostrovskaya at 2:00, just to give everybody enough time to sleep in, eat breakfast, and get out there. It turns out we were all up relatively early and could have easily met by 1:00 at the latest. When I got there to meet them I was informed that James was going to be meeting us out there too. He was supposed to go to Petrzavodsk for the weekend, but apparently he couldn’t get a ticket so he was still around. We took the long metro tide out to Avtovo and waited around for a while for James to get there. We all rode the marshutka out there, and once we got to the market we kind of all split up and found our own stuff. I had a good time exploring the flea market out front. I bought some really cool old soviet pins for 10 rubles each. I also found something that I am usually really into and figured I wouldn’t really be able to find any of in Russia: records! I ended up buying 4 total: an Okudzhava, a Vysotskiy, an Alica, and a Nautilus Pompilius. I’m going to have to ship stuff home anyways, so why not? I ended up going a little crazy and buying tons of MP3 CDs as well as quite a few movies. Why not when they’re so cheap? I got a bunch of Russian stuff that I’ve been curious about, as well as some MP3 CDs of Bowie and Roxy Music. I got some cool Russian movies as well. Must of the other guys didn’t really buy much, except for James who bought a ton and didn’t have anywhere to put everything besides a tiny paper-thin plastic bag that started falling apart. Luckily he had also bought a ridiculous banya hat that doubled as another bag. He ended up buying a CD by the old Dutch pop band Shocking Blue (Nirvana covered a song of theirs) because I had been looking at it. He asked me what it was I was looking at, and I said it was just some band I new almost nothing about but would like to learn more about, and he somehow must have taken it as a recommendation. I tried to tell him that he probably wouldn’t like it, but he kept saying, “If I don’t like it, it’s just a few bucks down the tube.” Yeah, he’s pretty well-off, as you might have guessed. Nick and PD left early, so Kenny, James and I were left to wander for a bit more. After some shaverma we caught a tramvai (that’s what they call a tram. It was my first time on one, actually) back to the metro and to home. I was pretty exhausted and ready to relax for a while that evening, but after I got home I got a text message from PD about meeting with people at Petra a little later to get a hookah. We hadn’t been there for ever or even had a hookah anywhere in a long time, so it sounded like a good time. After dinner I headed out to meet them by the metro. Katie, PD, Kenny, Matt, Stacey, Olympia, and Olympia’s friend Diana all came to hang out, and we had a couple beers and some cherry tobacco in the hookah. It was a nice relaxing time. We went to get some food afterwards, and instead of opting for McDonalds like everybody else I went to the stand outside and got another shaverma. Kenny got a beer and we hung out in McDonalds with everybody else while they ate. I did end up getting a little soft-serve ice cream cone from there, which only cost 6 rubles. After McDonalds we all had to decided what we wanted to do. You see, it was Orthodox Easter the next day, so at midnight all the churches in town have their traditional Easter ceremonies, and some of our friends were downtown to catch the event at Kazanskiy Sobor, but none of us really felt like getting down there to meet them. Well, I guess Kenny did, cause he took off to go meet up with everybody else. Olympia is Greek and Orthodox, so she was all set with her head-scarf and everything to go to the church just down the street from where we were, and she took Diana with her. I was really interested in checking out the Easter stuff to, but PD and Katie really weren’t, so they went to Kofe Khaus to hang out while I went to the church. There was a big crowd gathered out front, and for about ten minutes before midnight they kept ringing the church bell at few second intervals. Right at midnight, all the bells started going off like crazy, and the priests came out holding their big icons above their heads and started walking around the church. Everybody in the crowd followed them and made one lap around the church. I found Olympia and Diana as we were following the priests and stayed by them. Lots of people were holding candles, and the whole scene with all the people and lights and the bells ringing was pretty great. After our turn around the church we stepped inside for a second to see all the services, but it was so packed that we couldn’t stand to be in there for too long and got out. Everybody was chanting stuff, and the sound of everybody speaking at once sounded pretty cool. After we finished up there we met up with PD and Katie at Kofe Khaus and sat in there for a while gossiping. It was then time for us to all go home, so I shared a chasnik with the girls. We rode with a guy who was blasting Eminiem. All in all, Saturday was a pretty solid day.
On Sunday the weather was amazing, and I knew right when I woke up that it was a day to be spent wandering the city. Katie had mentioned the night before wanting to go exploring the next day, so I called her up and we made a plan to meet at Gostiny Dvor a little later. She invited Tom and Vickie to come, but they were both busy. PD said he would meet up with us later. Katie and I walked along Gostiny Dvor and then went into that big clothing market that I had gone to with Natalie so long ago. She really wanted to find those big bags made from straw that Russians pack all their stuff in when they travel, and we eventually found them. They are pretty cool and pretty functional bags, so I ended up buying one too. They were only about $1.30 each, so it was quite a deal. I also went into the domestic appliances / toiletries store because I needed a new electric razor. You see, I was stupid a few days before and used my razor without using a voltage converter and it fried my razor (even though I had used it without a converter before), and so my options were to be proactive and go out and buy a new razor or just forget about it and let my beard get all long and gross. I figured the former would be the better idea, so I bought the second cheapest razor (about $15), and thankfully had a new bag to carry it in. The razor turned out to be pretty terrible by the way, and only after about a half hour of running it across my face and agitating the skin pretty badly was I able to consider my face decently enough shaved. From there we tried to walk to Sennaya Ploshchad to get some food from one of the countless vendors, but somehow got set on a different course and ended up in an area where I’ve never walked around before, which was good because that’s what I had been wanting to do all along. We ended up near the Vladimirskaya metro station and then walked down the big street to the Pushkinskaya metro station, where we finally found a little café and got… you guessed it, more shaverma. We also each got a Berry Fanta, which I absolutely love. PD called us and since Katie had to leave soon to get home for some sort of special Easter dinner, he and I planned to meet at Ploshchad Vostanniya in about 45 minutes. After sitting and talking in the café for a while, Katie and I hopped on the metro and rode the two stops to Vostanniya. Katie waited with me for PD and then took of after he showed up. I convinced PD to come with me to some other obscure part of town, so we chose Ploshchad Lenina (by the way, “ploshchad” means “square,” so all these places I’ve been mentioning are different squares around the city), which is on the Vyborg side where nobody ever really goes. We got there and saw Finlandskiy Vokzal (Finland Train Station), which ironically does not serve Finland anymore. There is a big classic statue of Lenin in front, which I of course took a few pictures off. We started walking along the river , checking out the great view of the main part of the city across the way. We crossed a bridge over to the Petrograd side and saw the big battleship “Aurora” that is permanently on display there. We were standing around checking out a statue when out of nowhere, Stacey comes running up and grabs us. She and Matt had been sitting on a bench nearby. It’s so weird, because nobody ever really goes to this part of the city, let alone hangs out there, but then we somehow run into each other there out of the blue. So, we started hanging with them and sat on some benches by the river for a while. We talked about all our favorite SNL sketches and other American TV shows we miss. We kept walking and crossed the bridge back to the main part of town. There are tons of chunks of ice floating down the Neva right now that have all been breaking away from further up stream, and of course we had to see if we could spit onto them as they passed below the bridge. It isn’t that hard when the chunks are big enough. We walked around near the eternal flame and the Church on Spilt Blood for a while, and then most of us decided it was getting a little late and we started heading home one by one. PD went first, then Matt, Stacey and I stood on a little bridge over the Moika in the sun for a while before we parted ways. I walked along the Mokia (one of the canals that runs through the city) and ended up near the Hermitage. I found a big group of people in a big circling singing songs and playing guitars and I couldn’t figure out who they were, what they were doing exactly, or if they even all new each other, but it was still pretty cool. I tried taking some videos, but my batteries were too low for video and I only got a few one second clips. I walked through Palace Square along the Winter Palace and sat on a bench to wait for a bus. Back at home I started going through all the music I had bought the day before, and talked to my parents on the phone. I called my old house in Eugene after that and talked to Strand for a while. It was great to talk to him and hear about what’s been going on back home. I’m excited to get back and see everyone again, but it looks like I probably won’t be living with them again in the fall. It looks like I’ll probably be living with my friend and former Russian teacher Josh who is coming back from Taiwan after all. If that’s the case, I hope I don’t find it too hard to hang out with the old roommates and all that crew, cause I really do miss those guys. I had to take a shower and stuff, so I didn’t get to bed until around 2:00.
Today was Monday, and quite a wonderful Monday at that. I did something I hardly ever do and skipped one of my classes today, because it was too beautiful and warm of a day to be sitting in Phonetics class for an hour and a half. That room reeks of Beets too. I went with PD, Katie, and Kenny (noticing any patterns here?) and we decided to go to Sennaya Ploshchad to peruse their excellent assortment of food stands. Guess what we all ended up getting, though. So, we took our shavermas and say on a bench in the sun, and it was definitely a skipped-class well spent. Almost everybody else at school skips a lot of classes, so I feel justified in doing it this one time when the weather was so nice. After our shavermas we all got a gin and tonic in a can that Russians are so fond of and hung out on the bench for a while longer. When we were finished we went into McDonalds to use the bathrooms, and then we each ended up getting some ice cream (remember, 6 ruble ice cream cones). Kenny had to go to an internet café to research for a presentation, and PD and Katie were going to go to Soiree for a while, but I just couldn’t waste my day inside somewhere like that, so I went wandering around. I feel like I covered a lot of ground, and almost all in a part of town where I hadn’t been before. I finally saw Nikolskiy Cathedral and the Marinskiy Theater (where I will be seeing Don Giovanni on May 6th, by the way) and some cool buildings I never knew existed. I worked my way towards Nevskiy to go to the internet café with USB ports so I could upload some pictures, but when I got there I found that it was completely empty with no computers at any of the tables and big “for rent” signs in the window. I was just there like a month ago. Funny how fast things can come and go like that. I still had a little time to kill before it was time to teach English, so I got a bliny and a coke and walked around some more. I found a bench over near the Hermitage and sat around for a while people-watching. There were still quite a few soldiers and various such people practicing their parade moves in the square, and I saw the soldiers marching over the bridge again. There are lots and lots of people out all the time now enjoying the nice weather, so the city really does feel much more alive. I walked over to the university and ran into Anikan in the courtyard. She’s in St. Petersburg teaching English, but she also teaches Norwegian (her first language) to a class at the same place where I teach. We talked briefly and then went to our classes. Today was my last class with the teenagers because they have their final exams this week and next week. The real teacher was actually there for the whole class today, and she had me teach the students lots of different idioms I know. I taught them such great ones as “he has a hollow leg,” “blood is thicker than water,” and even, “going the way of the buffalo.” I don’t know if they understood them all entirely, but they seemed interesting. I brought some pictures of me when I was younger for them to see, and they were very interested in those too. It was very sad at the end of the class because I had to say goodbye to all the students. I gave them my email address and cell phone number (even though it would only do them any good for another few weeks), and they were very excited to get that. Some of them seem very attached to me now and rather upset to see me leave. The one 16 year-old girl named Sasha tried calling my cell phone with the number I gave them just to make sure I wasn’t trying to give them to wrong number. The teacher, Lera, had given me a goodbye present of a mini-matryoshka doll, a wooden spoon, and a magnet of Palace Square, which was all very nice. Before I left, she asked me to come meet with her other class that she teaches next Saturday to help with some exercises that they haven’t been able to do because they need a native speaker. It’s kind of early on Saturday, but it seems like it could be fun and it seemed like Lera really needed me to help her out. She said the class is all girls about my age, so that would be nice too. I’ll tell you how that goes later. I walked out to the bus stop and three of the students (Sasha, Ksenya, and Olya) wanted to walk me out and wait with me at the bus stop. They were still upset to see me go. A bus came and I said my final goodbye, but the bus was so packed that there was no room for me to get on, so I kept standing there and the girls laughed at the situation and came back one more time to say goodbye. They went back to class and the next bus came really quick. Now, here I am at home again. I’m not sure when my next post will be, because this Sunday we are taking a group trip to the old Russian town of Pskov, and won’t be coming back until Tuesday. I might not be able to write until after that. We’ll see how it goes. I hope everybody’s doing alright. Talk to you later.