И я не знаю, как мне прожить следующий день

Heeeyy... So, yeah, I haven't written anything here in about three months, but I haven't really felt too bad about it. The blog was really a Russia-specific thing, and I never intended to keep it going after I got back. I guess there are about two weeks at the end of my trip that I never wrote about here, but I am definitely not going to try and recount them in any lengthy-matter. In a nutshell, I did this: Went to Murmansk, came back to St. Petersburg in time for Emily's art show, then spent about 5 more days in the city staying at a hostel and going around visiting and re-visiting a few last places (Hermitage, Russian Museum, etc.). It was a nice end to the whole trip. I got back on May 27th, and since then I've just been hanging around Corvallis, working for OSU in a laboratory aiding in Swiss Needle Cast research (it's noting exciting, you wouldn't want me to explain it or anything). But, anyways, the main reason I wanted to make one lats post here (for now, anyways) was to post this essay I wrote for an essay contest through the International Programs department at U of O. It was actually a photo and essay contest, and I think all 5 of the photos I submitted are on my flickr account. The essay is about my trip to Murmansk, and because the essay guidelines limited the length to 1000 words, it forced me to be succinct (something you all know I was never good at) but I was really pleased with the final result. I turned in the essay in early July but have yet to hear of the contest results. So, who knows if it won or not. So, here is my final entry in the "Austin in Russia" blog (for the time being, anyways). I may very well resurrect this blog the next time I find myself in Russia or in any other part of the world which, hopefully, will be the case in the not too distant future. So, thanks for reading, and enjoy my essay, "Alone at the Top of the World":

“What the hell was I thinking?” I asked myself this question repeatedly as the train lurched slowly passed the abandoned train yards and withering industrial relics that litter the outskirts of the city. However ironically appropriate, the somber violin music weeping from the cabin’s speakers only exacerbated the already dismal scene outside. The forty or so Russian soldiers – with whom I had just shared an open-air train car for the past 28 hours – were getting restless as our final destination drew nearer, and as this uncomfortable restlessness permeated throughout the cabin I couldn’t help but wonder, “Why did I chose to come here?” I had just finished my term abroad in St. Petersburg, Russia and found myself with two extra weeks on my hands. Originally, my plan for after the program was to travel throughout Russia and Eastern Europe with my friend and fellow program participant Ruth. Unfortunately, that plan was shattered along with Ruth’s tibia when she was hit by a car two weeks before our trip was to begin. This, compounded with an unexpected heap of good old-fashioned Russian bureaucracy regarding my visa, meant that my remaining time had to be cut back drastically. Still anxious to travel, I ended up more-or-less on a whim buying a ticket by myself to Murmansk, a city about 840 miles north of Petersburg and well within the Arctic Circle. Why Murmansk? To me it seemed so isolated and illusive way up there, a place that few would ever get the chance to see. I guess it was the same reason why I had chosen Murmansk for my city-project in my Russian class back at the U of O the year before. Here was my opportunity to actually visit this distant and compelling place, quite possibly the only one I might ever have, and at the last minute I decided to take it. As I pulled into the Murmansk train station alone all those hours later, I was really beginning to question my judgment.
That same dreary music poured from the speakers at the station as I stepped into the city in a bewildered daze. Murmansk is by no means an attractive city. Founded only ninety years ago, its architectural heritage certainly leaves something to be desired. To the east the skyline is dominated by large, blocky Soviet-era apartment complexes sprawled across rolling hills of tundra, and to the west by a large industrial port along the Kola Gulf, with its bulky cranes and smog-spewing factories. Lonely and intimidated by my surreal new surroundings, the only thing I really needed was a good night’s sleep, so I headed straight for the city’s central hotel. Despite the difficulties of trying to sleep during 24-hour daylight, and the disheartening experience of having a hotel employee enter my room demanding to know why I had come to Murmansk, I hit the town the next morning with renewed optimism and enthusiasm. It quickly shriveled, however, after wandering alone down desolate back alleys and past crumbling buildings and dead dogs in the freezing May weather. Now, I’m into urban decay and gritty realism as much as the next guy, but being there, all alone at the top of the world in a seemingly neglected and forgotten city, it really started to wear on me. Fortunately, an opportunity to see another side of Murmansk had already been provided.
It turns out that a friend of mine in Petersburg had a cousin named Marina who lives in Murmansk, and when she heard about my trip she gave me Marina’s phone number and encouraged me to call. At first I wasn’t sure if I should or not, but after a day of wandering the city alone I was desperate for some human interaction. I called her that afternoon and we arranged to meet in the hotel lobby later that evening. We went for a walk through the city, down the same streets I had walked down earlier. She spoke no English, but my Russian was decent enough to maintain an interesting conversation, so we walked and talked about the lives we each lived on different sides of the world. She had no family in Murmansk and had moved there by choice four years earlier, which I found to be rather interesting given my early impressions of the city. She said she loved Murmansk, and would never want to go back to big-city life in Petersburg. Like most Russians, she came across as a bit standoffish at first, but revealed herself to be truly kind and generous once I got to know her a little better, and I was so grateful that she had taken the time to make a complete stranger feel welcome in her city. We parted ways that evening, and I returned to my room refreshed and willing to give the city another try.
The next day I spent exploring the city on my own again, but this time it was different. The weather was warmer, the buildings seemed prettier, and I just felt more enthused about being there. After meeting Marina, Murmansk seemed much less lonely and inhospitable. Now with a human face, the city felt to me much more dynamic and real than it had before; a city like any other, inhabited by normal people who are happy to be living there. My experience in Murmansk proved to be a microcosm of my overall experience in Russia. It can seem intimidating and overwhelming at first, and it’s easy to give up early and write the place off entirely, but if you scratch the surface a bit and really try to get to know it, the experience can be very rewarding. Beneath Murmansk’s cold and grim exterior, I discovered a wonderfully unique place where the pretense of isolation and illusiveness is humbly demystified. I spent only three days in Murmansk, but it was probably the most rewarding experience of my time abroad, and proved a fitting conclusion to one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.


-Austin

Закрой за мной дверь, я ухожу

So, here's what the situation is, for those who don't already know. Ruth - the girl I was supposed to travel with for a month and a half after my program ended - got hit by a car a couple weeks ago and broke her leg. So, obviously, she won't be able to travel, and I was forced to suddenly change my plans for after the program. That, compiled with a bunch of issues involving my visa extension and flight itinerary, ended up meaning that I can only stay in Russia, and that I can only stay until May 28th. So my travel plans were cut way back and after a lot of thought as to what I want to to and where I want to go with my extra two weeks in Russia, I finally settled on Murmansk, the largest city in the world inside the arctic circle. I leave today at 6:00 and it's a 28 hour train ride. I did a project on the city last year in Russian class, so I'm excited to finally get to see it. I'll be ariving back in Petersburg on Saturday, May 20th and hanging around here for another week before flying home the next Saturday, the 27th. I'm a little dissapointed that I won't get to see all of (or any of, at that) Eastern Europe like Ruth and I had planned, but I'm sure I'll have the opportunity again. Ruth is fine and everything, by the way. She flew home on Saturday. Our last day of classes was last Friday. It's good to be done with everything, but I'm definitely already missing all my friends from the program. I know I'll see some of them again. And thank god for Facebook, by the way. So, just thought I'd let everyone know what's up, for those who are interested. I'll try to make another quick post like this when I get back from Murmansk too, and hopefully put some pictures up on Flickr. Wish me luck at the top of the world!

Я ничего не знаю...

So, the end of my time in St. Petersburg is in a mere ten days. And as it were, there are a lot of end-of-the-term things that need to be wrapped up and taken care of. So, unfortunately, I may not be able to find the time to sit down and write up another big long post. If I do have a free night I certainly will, but there's no guarantee. My post-program travel plans have recently been thrown into complete dissary, and at the moment I have no clear idea where I will be going or when I will be getting back. So, I'm basically writing this brief post to let everybody know that I don't know what will happen from here on out. Once I know more, I will write something here, but for now, I'll just have to leave it at this. Take care

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.

Lock it up

So I finally bought a new thumb drive and will now be able to upload this post along with the last one I wrote about a week ago (yeah, check below this one for another new post. In fact, you should probably go read that one first to maintain continuity). I guess it’s fair to say that a lot has happened since then, so I’ll get right to it. Hopefully I’ll be able to remember all the important details of the last week. Tuesday was a typical day of school, as far as I can remember, and I rode the bus home from Smolniy when classes were over. A few of the Brits were on that bus to, and I found out that Amanda and Olympia were planning on going to Helsinki for the weekend, and I thought it would probably be a good idea to tag along with them. But, you can read more about that later. At home I did some homework, relaxed a little bit, you know, the usual. Then of course, as usual, left a little before nine to go down to the Red Lion for free champagne night. That’s been four Tuesday nights in a row, I believe, and I’ll most likely be making it five tomorrow. The usual gang was there as usual, except this time Stacey had brought a new group of friends (well, one friend of hers, who intern brought a couple of her own) from the same program in Denmark that the last group of friends had come from. They seemed nice, but didn’t really seem interested in talking much with us. They started getting into a deep conversation among themselves about culture and stuff, so after a bit I moved over to another table to hang with Kenny, Peter David, and the like. One of the girls was from Portland, though, so that was pretty cool. The Norwegian girl named Anikan who was there the week before came again, and we talked with her for a while. I apologized for making a lame Star Wars joke the last time I saw her (Actually, I thought it was pretty funny. Katie had said about Anikan that, “She’s really good at pool,” and I responded with, “and pod-racing.” Get it?), and she said that everbody always does and it doesn’t really bother her. I mentioned that my middle name was Luc and then we started joking about how she was my father. It was pretty fun. Oh yeah, there was this weird guy from Ghana that was hanging around our table and hitting on all the girls. His name was, get this, “0-5 New York City” (that’s how he introduced himself to everybody, at least). He danced with Katie for a bit and by the end of the night was proclaiming that she was his girlfriend and that he was going to take her back to Africa with him. It was a pretty sketchy (or dodgy, as the Brits would say) situation, but I the guy was harmless. I had told Emily before about free champagne night and she made it out this week. She brought a friend along named Mave (yeah, a lot of weird names at the Red Lion), and they sat at a table near us. They talked with Tsveti and Abby for a while, and it’s good to see my different groups of friends merge together sometimes. Olympia showed up to, even after saying that she probably wouldn’t. I knew she would. I mainly stayed at the same table the whole night, having different conversations with different people. I talked with Emily and Mave for a while. Mave told me about cheap buses to Helsinki because she had just gone the other weekend (again, read more about Helsinki later). Peter David and I had a private conversation, too. I teased Olympia about all kinds of things like usual (you can’t really have normal conversations with Olympia), and talked to others like Bryce, Matt, Stacey, etc. It was a good night, as usual. Well, for the most part anyway. Bryce ended up getting his cell phone lost/stolen because he left it out on the table and some new people came and sat there. It was a bummer, but he got a new one so it’s fine now. I left with Katie and Olympia when 0-5 New York City started getting too creepy. We got a chasnik for 200 rubles, which was really good because last time none of the drivers would go below 250. We all got home safe and sound at around 2:00-ish (I think. I can’t remember for sure). I dragged myself out of bed on Wednesday morning to go to school. School was the same as always. Again, sorry I always skip over school. It’s just become so monotonous that nothing ever really stands out from one day to the next. Not that anything we talk about would really be of interest to anybody else. Maybe one of these days I will write a post more about school, about my professors, etc. But for now, I’ll keep skipping over it for the most part. After school I went straight home and worked on my homework for a while before I had to go teach English to the professors. I had an essay do the next day about my spring break and impressions of traveling in Russia. I worked on that for a while and a few other assignments before heading out and catching a marshrutka over to the university. In class we talked more about “genius” and inventions and things like that. I think those students are starting to really like, or at least respect me. It’s always hard to figure out what to do with them because I really have no instructions or structure to go off of other than the book, so I basically just pick up from where we last left off in the book. The best part, though, and what I try to incorporate into the lesson as much as I can, is impromptu discussion about the topics in the book and about what the students think about them themselves. I think it’s a really good way for them to use and learn the language and learn more about American / English culture, and it’s good for me because it’s much more interesting that going over grammar exercises. After class I talked with Marina on the bus again. She told me about some good clubs to go to in the city. At home I finished up my homework and tried to go to bed as early as possible, because I had basically decided at that point that I would be going to Helsinki the next day and figured it would be good to get as much sleep before a long overnight bus ride as possible. I went to classes the next day and tried not to linger around at school afterwards so I could get home and pack some stuff up before heading out for the weekend. We were going to leave Thursday night because the Brits don’t have school on Friday, and besides if we left on Friday night it would only give us about one day in Helsinki, and that wouldn’t be enough. I through some close, my camera, ipod, and a few various odds and ends into my little duffle bag and around 8:15 headed out to meet up with the others. We had been trying to get Tom to come along with us and at the last minute he decided to tag along, so the plan was for the four of us (Tom, Olympia, Amanda, and me) to meet in front of the Hotel Oktyabrskaya on Ploshchad Vostannia at 9:00. This is what I had learned from Mave the other night: There are a bunch of buses that wait around right there every evening around 9:00/9:30 that go to Helsinki, and you don’t need a ticket or any kind of reservation to ride them, you just show up and pay them 350 rubles (about $13 or $14, not bad for a 250 mile or so bus ride) and you’re on your way. Mave had said that they ask you if you can hide cigarettes in your bag for them to smuggle across the border, but we were never approached about anything like that. We say an older woman holding a sign for Helsinki and she took us to the right bus and that was that. The bus finally pulled out around 10:00 and we drove through the northern suburbs and out into the countryside. There was a TV on the bus and one of the bus drivers (I think there were two operating in shifts) put on a video of some weird variety/comedy/musical concert, but I was listening to my ipod so I only watched and didn’t listen. The bus stopped in the Russian town called Vyborg, which is supposed to be pretty cool, but all we did was stop at a gas station to use the bathroom and get some snacks. A bit passed Vyborg we came to the border, and had to go through about three different check points just to leave Russia, before we even go to Finnish customs. At the first stop, a guard just got on the bus and looked at everybody’s passports, and at the next we had to get out and go through official customs where they actually check all our paper work, stamp our passports and make us chose whether or not we have anything to declare. Then there was one more guard who looked at all our passports before we got back on the bus. It all went smoothly for all of us. I kept my migration card the whole time and never let them see it, because after the last time trying to get into the Ukraine I was really paranoid that if they got it they wouldn’t give it back. They never even asked to see it, so that was no problem. After a quick stop at the duty-free shop, we went a little ways down the road to Finnish customs. It was fine for all of us except Olympia, who is a Greek citizen and has a sketchy-looking Greek passport that apparently her dad made because he works at the Greek consulate in Trieste, Italy, and has the authority to make passports. Tom, Amanda and I made it through with no hassle what so ever, and then waited around outside for about 15 minutes while the customs officers called around and checked numbers and all kinds of things because apparently the number on the passport was hard to read and they couldn’t figure something out or something. I was never really clear on why. Some Finnish officers hauled away some scrawny German guy who was definitely on something. It was kind of weird, but still felt really safe because we were in real Europe. After everything got straightened out with Olympia’s passport we got back on the bus for the final stretch to Helsinki. It was around 2:00 in the morning or so by then, so I tried to sleep but really couldn’t because I was so cramped on the bus and it was so warm that I just couldn’t get comfortable at all. I got maybe a half hour of unsatisfying sleep at the most. About a half hour outside of Helsinki it started getting light and I could see the nice forested Finnish countryside. We got into the outskirts of the city and dropped some guy off at some place he wanted, and I was able to grab his seat and stretch out a bit. The bus kept going and dropped everybody off in a parking lot next to the bus station. So there we were, dropped off in the middle of Helsinki at about 6:00 AM, exhausted with nowhere to sleep and nothing to do, so we started walking around and seeing what we could find. We were all very tired, of course, so we decided that they first course of action should be to find a place to sleep. We walked in the direction of a hostel that Tom stayed at the last time he was in Helsinki and found it pretty quick, despite our worries. We went upstairs to the reception desk and asked for a room. We told the guy that we had no reservations, and he informed us that they were all booked up. He we should go down to the train station and talk to the “hotel experts” there to try and find a good place. Back on the street we were looking through my Finnish guidebook for other hostels and stuff (I had found a Lonely Planet guidebook of Finland among the books on the shelves in my room, obviously left by a previous student. I didn’t think I was going to get the chance to need it, but now I’m glad it was there), when a weird drunk man came up to us and started talking in Finnish. We told him in English that we don’t speak Finnish and were really surprised when he wouldn’t speak English back to us, because everybody in Finland speaks English. He kept trying to tell us things, and pointed to my big blue hat and said something like “pea-pod” and thought it was really funny. He kept making all kinds of weird gestures, and at one point said something that sounded like, “fuki fuki fuki,” to which Tom replied, “that’s a pretty weird thing to say to another person,” which kind of became one of many catch-phrases from our weekend in Helsinki. We walked away from the guy and went down to the Bus station, which we had already seen and knew how to get to. The bus station is pretty cool looking (check flickr) and has a big open square right next to it. Inside we saw that the “hotel expert” kiosk was closed and wouldn’t open for a few hours, so we picked up some maps and guidebooks, made some calls and tried to find a place to stay that wasn’t too expensive. There was broken glass on the floor and some vagrant-types that these burly-looking security guards kept kicking out. I tried to convince them that it would be a good idea to get on the internet and try to find someone on Couchsurfing.com or Globalfreeloaders.com that would let us stay with them, but they thought it was a bad idea. We finally decided to check out this place called Hotelli Finn that was really close and seemed reasonably affordable. It turned out to be a really great place. It was all on the top floor of a downtown building, and had nice little comfortable rooms for 65 euro a night (80 for a room with a shower, which Olympia and Amanda took), which is more than I would have like to pay, but it was in a pinch and it isn’t that bad when you consider the fact that I was splitting it with Tom. Finland, I found, is just a pretty expensive country in general. Oh well, what can you do? Nothing, that’s what. We got our rooms and pretty much all crashed out right way. We all went to sleep at around 8:30 and didn’t wake up until about2:30 in the afternoon. We like to joke that we got three nights’ sleep out of the two that we paid for at the hotel. Once we were all up we decided to go wander around and check out the town. Helsinki is relatively small. The population is only about 530,000, which I guess is pretty comparable to Portland proper. In fact, the city reminded me of Portland in a lot of ways. It was a huge difference to see a city like this coming from St. Petersburg. The streets are very clean and well-maintained, there are very few cars on the road (much less than in Petersburg, at least) which means it is very quiet and peaceful and just very pleasant feeling all around. The people are all friendly and speak English, which is always a huge bonus. The architecture in Helsinki (yeah, like that band everybody likes) is great, and there are all kinds of cool building fronts with the occasional big church or cathedral poking out here or there. There are lots of statues and monuments everywhere too, which is one thing that I really like about a lot of European cities that I have been to and which that it was more common in American cities. We walked down to the waterfront where there was a nice little bay area with islands here and there and walkways between many of them. The water in the little bay area was still largely frozen, and there were all kinds of seagulls and ducks flying around squawking and sitting on the ice. We stopped at a little coffee stand that had tables around it. Olympia was buying drinks for everyone so I let her buy me some hot chocolate and I sat and looked out on the water. The girl working at the counter was really nice, and we were marveling at how great all the Finnish people are and how great the quality of life is. There was a blanket draped over one of the chairs next to us and we thought somebody had left it. Then we realized that there were the same blankets on almost all the chairs that people were using, and we realized that they are just left there for people to use in case they get cold! How amazing is that! I’m sure that none of them have ever been stolen too, because that’s just not something that a Finn would do. I hadn’t worn my big jacket so I was rather cold and too advantage of the Finnish hospitality. So, needless to say, we were all pretty impressed with Finland by that point. We walked around on the little islands and took some pictures before heading back to the hotel for a little break. We stopped at a little grocery store along the way for some snacks and what not. Tom got some marinated garlic cloves in olive oil, and I got a deliciously warm and soft loaf of French bread. Tom and I each got a six-pack of beer. He chose the Danish brand Carslberg (which he already knew he really liked) and I trued the cheap Finnish brand called Koff. That was all I was going to get, until I saw probably the most exciting thing that I saw the whole time I was in Helsinki: Dr. Pepper! I hadn’t had a Dr. Pepper in about three months and was really starting to miss it. I only bought one bottle, though. It was a little bit different from the American kind, but it was still undoubtedly Dr. Pepper, and I was very happy to have found it. I only saw it in that one grocery store, so I don’t think it’s really all that common in Finland. Apparently it’s more popular in Estonia. Back at the hotel we hung out in Olympia and Amanda’s room because it was so big. We snacked on bread and garlic and had a little beer. We watched a little Finnish TV, which is great because everything is subtitled instead of dubbed, so we could watch all the American movies and TV shows that they played. There was this one movie called Shortcuts that Tom was getting into, but we pulled him away from it so we could go get some dinner. We found a “Mexican” place that seemed alright, if not a little expensive, Tom and I each ordered some Chicken burritos that turned out to be insanely huge and came with rice, beans, sour cream, guacamole and lettuce on the side. I somehow managed to finish it all, while Tom barely put a dent in his. It was also really nice to get free water and chips like a normal restaurant in America. There is no such thing as free water in Russia. We were all so stuffed after our meal that we just went back to the hotel room to relax. We watched Memento on TV and that terrible Sitcom with Reba Macintyre (why would something like that be popular on Finland?). I made a fort out of the sofa cushions and the others made fun of me. The girls got tired and kicked us out of their room, so we went back to ours and went to bed. We all had a good night’s sleep and woke up in the late morning. Once we were all ready we went for some breakfast at a local fast-food chain called Hesburger, which was actually not that bad. After we ate we all decided we would like to use the internet, so we found an internet café that only had two computers and which were both being occupied. The employee informed us that there was another one across the street in the shopping center, so we went there and found that if you buy something you can get 15 minutes of free internet. I got some ice cream and the others got their own things and we took turns using one of the two computers. I just checked my email, checked facebook and that was it. Once everybody was set for the internet we had to decided what we wanted to do next. All the others really wanted to go shopping and look around the Mall area, which of course I had no interest in doing. I told them that I was going to walk around and I would meet them in an hour and a half. I headed out and walked passed the train station and around some corners and then headed for the water. I walked along the embankment for a ways until I reached this big church on a small hill I walked around that and took some pictures of the church and of the view from the hill, and then headed to the waterfront on the other side of the small peninsula that the church was on. There was a touristy crafts market there,a dn I looked at all the souvenirs and everything but didn’t buy anything. The weather was beautiful and I took lots of pictures of buildings and statues and all that. I could see the top of another church a few blocks away, so I walked towards that and found that it was a huge church right next to a big open square with a statue of Alexander II right in the middle of it. I climbed the big stairs up to the church and had a look inside. It’s a Lutheran church, I guess, and wasn’t nearly as extravagant as some of the Orthodox churches or gothic cathedrals that I have seen, but it was still pretty cool to see. I wandered around the streets a little more before it was time to meet back up with the gang. Walking around by myself is always one of the most rewarding experiences when I travel, and I’m glad I got the opportunity to do it in Helsinki. I found Tom back on the computer when I got back, and Olympia showed up soon afterwards. We waited around for Amanda for a while just outside the café, but she never came. Tom and I got in a dispute as to whether or not the University of Pennsylvania is an Ivy League school, and he got back on the computer to prove me wrong. We eventually went looking for Amanda but couldn’t find her and thought maybe she went back to the hotel. We got back and saw that she wasn’t there, so we waited around just a little while before she showed up. We hung out in Tom’s and My room for a little bit before we were all ready for some dinner. Choosing a place to eat was a big hassle. After discussing it for a long time we decided on trying to find some Italia food. We went to a place called Iguana but found the menu to be rather unappetizing (well, at least I did) and decided to move on. We wandered around trying to find something else we could all agree on, and finally walked into a mall that had a decent-looking Italian restaurant. Olympia spoke Italian with the waitress so we were on their good side. This place actually had free refills, which also doesn’t exist in Russia, but you have to go up to the soda machine and refill it yourself like in a fast-food place. No biggie. The food was quite decent and came with lots of free bread. We also each got a shot of some kind of liquor that was on-the-house. After dinner we all agreed that it was time to figure out hwo we were getting home the next day. We tried calling the number on the card we had been given by the bus company we had taken there, and after some cell phone troubles finally got through, only to have it cut out before we could get all the information we needed. We tried calling some places from a pay-phone but couldn’t figure it out. We went back to the hotel and tried to use the phone in the room, but that didn’t work either, I had been trying to get a hold of Emily all day so she could give me Mave’s number so I could call her and find out how she got back. She finally got a hold of me and gave me Mave’s number, but she doesn’t have a cell phone so I could only call her host-family’s house. I didn’t get any answer on that phone, so that was a bust. Tom finally got a hold of the bus company again and talked to the women named Nina. She told us something about calling again at 8:00 the next morning or something like that, so we left it at that and decided we would figure it all out then in the morning. We relaxed around the hotel for a while before heading out to check out the nightlife. There was a little bar right downstairs from the hotel, so we decided to check that out. We actually got carded at the door (well, “passported”) but of course were let in. It was all so much more expensive here than in Russia. It was about 5 euros for a beer (well, it was a nice beer [Newcastle]) and about the same for a rum and coke. I’m used to Russia where It costs a maximum of 80 rubles (less than $3) for a good cheap beer and around 100 rubles for a shot. I only had one beer and one rum and coke, though. We sat at a table and chatted for a while and drank our drinks. Tom and I talked about music as usual while the girls had to carry on their own conversation. The bar got pretty hopping a little later on. I was pretty tired and knew I wasn’t going to be able to do a long night. There was talk of staying up all night and getting on the bus at 8:00 the next morning, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to manage that. Olympia and I were a bit hungry, so we decided to grab a quick bite at the McDonalds around the corner. I ordered a cheeseburger and they told me, “we don’t sell cheeseburgers here. You can get a double cheeseburger though,” so I had to go with the double. I thought that was a pretty weird thing to say to another person. After we finished we walked back to the bar and saw Tom and Amanda coming out. Tom was all set to go out to a club, but I definitely wasn’t feeling it (when am I ever?). I did not want to stay out really late and then have to try and sleep on the bus the next day. In fact, I was ready to go back to the hotel right then. But Tom was all set to go and trying to get us to come. Amanda and Olympia kind of wanted to go and kind of didn’t and we stood on the street corner for a long time while Tom tried to convince us to come. We decided that we would go back to the hotel for a little while, they would take a nap, and then they would go out to the club (I definitely wasn’t going to go). It became apparent after a little while that once they went to bed they weren’t going to get up to go to the club at 3:00 in the morning, and the club idea quickly lost steam. Tom was a little disappointed, but he was set to go to bed by then too. So, we all went to sleep planning on getting up early the next morning and trying to get back to St. Petersburg. Tom set his alarm and woke up around 8:00 to call Nina again. The call didn’t work or something and we just ended up going back to bed for a little while. We woke up again around 8:30 and decided that we should probably just go back to the spot where we had been dropped off the other day and hope that the same kind of bus will be there again and will be going back to St. Petersburg soon. We checked out of our hotel rooms, hit the streets of Helsinki on a cold, foggy Easter morning and walked back to that parking lot where we had been dropped of. Luckily, there was a bus waiting to go to St. Petersburg just like we had hoped. We actually met that Nina women, paid our 10 euros each, and got on the bus. After sitting around for a little while, we learned that the bus didn’t actually leave until 1:00, meaning we had gotten up really early and checked out of our hotel rooms for nothing. We could have slept in and still made it to the bus in time. Oh well. Live and learn. We decided we might as well go walk around and try to find some food. It was about 9:00 on an Easter Sunday morning, so of course nothing was open. We had a hunch that the McDonalds down on the main drag would be open, so we walked down there and sure enough, there it was, a shining beacon to our hungry eyes. We got some breakfast sandwiches and the like and sat around for a little while eating our breakfast. There were a lot of young people in there who had obviously just come back from partying in the clubs all night and were having their early morning meal before heading home to bed. One girl got up to use the bathroom and threw up on the stairs on the way their. We sat around for a while after we were finished just because there was no place else to go really. After a while all the young party animals left and soon the middle-aged tourist crowd took their place, fresh off of their long night’s sleep. After a while we decided that we might as well head back to the bus and wait around for a while before it leaves. It was pretty boring back on the bus, but at least we could relax a bit in the somewhat comfortable chairs. When 1:00 finally rolled around we were out of there. Luckily the bus was pretty empty and I was able to get two seats to myself, which proved to be key to my comfort on the way back. For the movie, this time they showed some cheesy 70’s American action movie called Sloane that I had never heard of before. It was a pretty ridiculous movie. After that one they played Once Upon a Time in American, which I had heard of before but knew nothing about. It was pretty violent and messed up from what I could tell not listening to it. The bus stopped at a fish market outside of Helsinki that had all kinds of crazy fish and sea animals for sale. I saw a stack of whole eels, for example. Pretty weird stuff. I bought some soda and that was god enough for me. Once we got to the border we stopped at a grocery store where some of the people were dropped off while the bus went back up the road just a little bit to this sketchy store that sold all kinds of things in bulk. We didn’t get out at the grocery store, but stayed on the bus and got to see everything that they were doing there. There was one building that was like an empty little warehouse that had a sign that said “importing exporting” on it, so we knew right away it was pretty sketchy. Some men started loading big bags full of strange assortments of clothes into the baggage area at the bottom of the bus. Tom was convinced that there was secret stuff hidden in the clothes that they were smuggling across the border. Who knows, maybe the bus is just offering a cheap way for this company to get their goods into Russia. Either way, it didn’t seem like it could be entirely legal, but I didn’t ask questions. Once everything was loaded up headed back to that grocery store and picked everybody else up, and again loaded some boxes of assorted good into the bottom of the bus. From there it was a few dozen yards to the border. Finnish customs were a breeze. They just glanced over our passports, stamped them, and we were on our way. Once we got to the Russian side we had to fill out new migration cards, as is required for all non-Russian citizens when entering the country. We showed them our old migration cards too and the women told us that we need photocopies of them for their records the next time we enter Russia. Whatever, at least they gave them back to us. All in all, border crossing went really quick, and after another quick stop at the duty-free shop, we were on our way back home. I bought a bar of chocolate that apparently is for men only (I don’t get it). The sides of the road were filthy as soon as we entered Russia. For the rest of the ride I listened to music and maybe even dozed off a little bit, I can’t remember. Soon we were in the northern suburbs of St. Petersburg and traffic jans became a reality again. We stopped at the metro station called Chyornaya Reka (Black River) and some people got off there. I realized that it would probably be a lot quicker if I got off here and tool the metro than if I stayed on the bus and rode it all the way back to Ploschad Vostannia. So, I said goodbye to my travel companions and hoped on the metro and before too long I was back in my apartment, safe and sound. My host-mom whipped me up a quick plate of pelmeny with sour cream, and I called home and talked to my mom, dad, sister, and grandma for a while. I didn’t really have that much homework to do, so I took a shower, watched some Family Guy on my computer and went to bed. Today after classes were over I used the internet for a while and then tried to turn in my passport to be extended. See, I’m going to travel in Russia and then in Eastern Europe for a while after the program is over, and in order to do that I need to have my visa extended for a while so I can stay in Russia past May 15th. Natasha, the woman in charge of all that at Smolniy, told me that if I turned in today (Monday) I would get it back on May 5th, which would give me plenty of time before the end of the program and would also mean I would get it back just in time to maybe make a trip to Estonia and Latvia on the weekend of the 6th/7th (Tuesday the 9th is a holiday, so I thought I might skip that Monday and take a four-day trip to the Baltic nations). I went into Natasha’s office to turn it in, and she asks me, “Do you have your photos?” Apparently, you need three 3x4 cm matte photos of yourself to get your visa extended, which she had neglected to tell me when she was explaining to me what I needed to do to get my visa extended. So, now I have to turn it in tomorrow (Tuseday), and Natasha told me that I won’t be getting it back until about the 11th, which would still get it back to me just before the program ends and it’s time to start traveling, but leaves me no hope of taking a long weekend in the Baltic nations. I was pretty bummed out about that for a while after school, but at least it means I won’t be spending more money. I can use the money I would have spent on that for the rest of my travels later this summer. So, after that disappointing blow, I went with John and Peter David to the Uzbek restaurant for a big delicious lunch to cheer myself up. The park we usually walk through is currently closed for drying, so we had to walk around. The food was amazing, as usual, and I was completely stuffed afterwards. John went home, but Peter David tagged along with me while I ran some errands. First, we stopped in at the computer store so I could by a new thumb drive. This place called “Komputer Tsentr Kei” is a chain of computer stores around the city that still operates like an old-fashioned Russian store. This means, you have to talk to the employee and tell them what you want, then they write down the product number on a piece of paper, then you bring that piece of paper to the cashier where you pay and get a receipt, which you then bring back to the employee you talked to who then gives you what you bought. It’s so complicated and pointless, but that’s basically Russia in a nutshell. So I got a pretty good deal on a 256 MB thumb drive (it’s super tiny too!), and then it was on to errand number two. I had to get those photos taken for my visa extension and Natasha had told me that there was a place across from the Chernyshevskaya metro station that would do it, and we were right around there so we went to check it out. The place is a little photo store inside of a 505 store. I told the really grumpy and unhelpful photographer what I needed, and he told me that they wouldn’t be ready until Friday, but told me the address of a place nearby that could do it today. Peter David and I looked around 505 for a little bit before I went and found this other place. He bought a Pearl Jam CD and I bought a DVD of more Gaidai films. When we were done, he took of for home while I found this other photo place. I found it pretty quick, talked to the photographer and told him what I needed, and he had me sit down right away and snapped the picture. I only had to wait about 10 minutes for my pictures. This guy was a Photoshop wiz. There were a couple other people before me and he finished touching up their pictures and printing them out before he got to mine. I watched him as he worked with mine. My hair was kind of sticking out on one side, and he Photoshoped it out and made the whole thing look nice and professional. It only cost me 100 rubles for six photos too. So, very pleased with my experience at that photo place, it was time to get over to the university to teach some English. I rode the metro to Gostiny Dvor, where I jumped on a bus that I had never taken before (route 187) that apparently went to the right place. It did, and I got to the university with plenty of time to spare. I sat and did some homework in the courtyard before it was time to start class. The teacher was sick again, so it was just me and the kids like it has been the past few times. I like it this way, actually. We went over some exercises and they took turns reading an article about a guy hiking the Appalachian Trail, and then they asked me questions about places in the US and stuff like that. During the break I hung in the room with some of my favorite students, and I tried to draw a picture of Russia on the white board. Then we took turns quizzing each other on the location of Russian cities. I know more about Russian geography than they do. There are two kids in the class who usually have a hard time focusing and staying on track, and they sat together today so it was a bit tough keeping them from talking to each other the whole class and messing around on their cell phones, but they eventually settled down. We did some work with crossword puzzles before it was time for me to go. I caught the number 7 bus right as I stepped outside and this got home very fast. My host-mom wasn’t there when I got home but arrived soon afterwards and apologized that she wasn’t already there and hadn’t made dinner yet because she had been at the dentist and thought I was coming back later. She made me a really good pasta and meat dish, though the soup was sub par. I basically started writing this post when I finished dinner, and now here I am almost four hours later and still writing. Well, not for long. Wow, this post really ranks up there with some of the longest ones. Plus there’s that other new one that I will be uploading at the same time. Well, you’ve all got your work cut out for you if you want to read it all. Though I suppose if you are reading this you already have read it all. Good for you. See you around.

One of the great posts of our generation

Hey! It’s that time again. You know. So, let’s see, Friday. Friday I went to school like normal. I brought my laptop because I was going to meet Emily at Soiree at 3:15, and I figured I might as well get some internet time in as long as I was there. I was still kind of sick like the day before, but definitely feeling well enough to be out and about. So, I was kind of just assuming I would go straight to Soiree after school, but then I found out that there was an excursion planned to go visit Pushkin’s apartment. I wasn’t really that interested, but in the end I figured I may as well go, seeing as how all those excursions have already been paid for. Plus, it would still give me plenty of time to get back to Soiree in time to meet Emily. We rode a van-bus over to a spot along the Moika and walked through a tiny doorway into a courtyard and into the apartment that has now been turned into a museum about Pushkin. I wish I had actually read some Pushkin or something before having gone, because it turned out to be pretty boring as I had expected. The furniture in the apartment wasn’t even his, just furniture “from his time.” I did see the actual couch he died on after being shot in a duel, though, and the vest he was wearing. So I guess it wasn’t a total bust. I would like to read some Pushkin anyways, though. After the tour, which only took about 25 minutes or so, we were free to go. Kenny and Rob had to head back up Nevskiy too, so I walked with them to the Gostiny Dvor metro station and we parted ways from there. We talked about Street Fighter on the way. I rode just one stop to Mayakovskaya and made the short walk to Soiree. Emily was caught in traffic, so she was a little late while I sat and tried using the internet for a while. It was going incredibly slow and I could barely get anything done. I listened to the two Americans sitting behind me. The one girl is apparently in Russia teaching English, and she seemed so ditsy. She kept talking about how she can’t wait to get back to America so she can get hair extensions. Emily showed up after not too long and we sat and chatted for a while. We had met so I could lend her something, but I’m not allowed to say what it is because it is in connection with something that is apparently bad luck to talk about. Sorry, Emily asked me not to talk about it, so I guess I’ll just have to leave it at that. Don’t worry, it’s nothing bad or weird. She tried using her computer too but it was having troubles and wouldn’t start up or something. I hope it’s OK now. After a couple hours of being there we headed out. I rode the bus home to relax for a bit before heading out again. There was a plan to meet outside of Gostiny Dvor at 9:30 and then go to this bar called Money Honey. Some people wanted to go to this place called Club Revolution instead, but other people said that it sucked, so we did end up going to Money Honey, thank goodness. There was some miscommunication with Vickie and e ended up meeting outside of the Vasileostrovskaya metro station instead of right outside our apartments. We met up with Katie, Bryce, Matt, and Tom and walked to Money Honey. We had to walk along the side of Gostiny Dvor, and the building is huge and takes forever to walk down. Maybe I haven’t explained what Gostiny Dvor is yet. It’s basically a huge department store / mall with lots of expensive stores. I haven’t actually been inside, but walking around the outside of it is good enough for me. At one point while we were walking I was looking over at Tom and Matt, I think, and didn’t see that somebody had opened the door from the building right into me, and I smashed my shoulder into the door. It was two older women who were coming out of the building, and they just gave me a weird look and walked away. Of course, had something like that happened in the US, the person who had opened the door into the other person would have been really apologetic, but not in Russia. Forget it. Anyway, Money Honey was really close, so we get in and pay the cover and get checked with a phony-metal detector (I swear it was) and were let in. This place is pretty crazy. There’s a big confederate flag out front, and the bottom floor is like a western-themed bar that plays rock ‘n roll and country music, while the second and third floors are more like a bar / club / whatever, but all really laid back and with lots of room to sit and relax. They also have some really weird things there, like a little shooting range where you can shoot these weird pellet-gun things at cans and stuff for 50 rubles. It seemed like a really bad idea to mix alcohol and guns, but I guess they had it all under control there, and the things that you shoot from the gun probably couldn’t really hurt anybody anyways. They’re like these little metal tip things that are maybe about the size of a BB, but weigh a lot less. There was a band playing when we got there, and another one was on after them. Neither were that great. We got a big table and sat around for a bit. Vickie somehow won a free Heiniken T-shirt. Ruth, Kenny, Nick, and Allisonn showed up a little later. They had been sitting in KFC drinking for a while before and were already pretty drunk. Especially a certain person in the group, but I shouldn’t really talk about it I guess. There’s a lot of “drama” surrounding some certain people in our group and I don’t want to talk about who it is or what it is, but that means that I can’t really explain a lot of our time spent at Money Honey cause it all kind of centered around that. Let’s just say some things were said and some people left and some people are mad at other people and blah blah blah. I try to stay out of all that stuff as much as possible. But anyways, some people left relatively early, but some of us decided to stay. The remaining group consisted of Nick, Ruth, Allisonn, Kenny, and Me. After hanging around for a while we decided to go to KFC (back to KFC for some of us) because we were hungry and KFC is open 24 hours. On the walk over Kenny and Ruth went the wrong way and walked for quite a while before they realized that they were walking the wrong way by themselves, and the rest of us tried to get a hold of them and waited around while they came back to meet us. Some weird guy started walking with us on the way there, and came in with us to the restaurant. He ordered a beer and sat with us while we ate our chicken. He said he was really into old American rock ‘n roll, like Carl Perkins, Eddy Cochran, Elvis, and all that, though his favorite band is the Stray Cats. He would keep breaking into song every now and then, singing songs like, “Hello, Mary Lou.” He wanted us to come with him to some music club, and some of us thought it would be fun to go with him at first, but he started getting creepier and weirder and we soon realized that we didn’t want to go with him. He kept telling Allisonn how beautiful she was, kissing her hand, and then pulled out a bad of paper and drew her portrait. He wrote “So beauty girl!” at the top of it. When it was time to leave they all kind of wanted me to tell him that we weren’t going to go with him to the club, so when we got out the door I told him that we were all tired and were just going to go home. He seemed fine with it, shook our hands and crossed the street and finally got away from us. He then kind of lingered for a while and we felt like he was trying to follow us or watch us or whatever, so we slipped down that side street that loops around and comes out on Palace Square in front of the Hermitage. We wanted to go to Kofe Khaus for Ice cream, but we had to go this round-about way to avoid this guy. Luckily we were able to loose him and made it to Kofe Khaus. It was about 4:45 in the morning at this point. We sat down, relaxed, and had some ice cream, but by the time we were done it was still only about 5:30 and all the public transportation of course doesn’t open until 6:00. So, we decided to take a cue from all the Russian teenagers that were still hanging around in there and sat on the sofa-type seats to take a nap for a half-hour. The manager didn’t seem to mind really, until it got close to 6:00 and he started waking everybody up so they could get out and ride the metro home. I was so read t get home and sleep for real at that point. Everybody else headed for the metro, but it’s better for me to ride the bus, of course, so I walked to the bus stop just in front of the Hermitage and waited for a little while until the number 7 came. I got home and went right to sleep in my bed, not even bothering to get under the covers. I slept that way all through the next morning (well, early afternoon I guess). I had my usual weekend bliny breakfast with that delicious carmely sauce. There was a gathering of sorts going on that day at Nathan and Mila’s (the program directors [they’re married]) apartment. They had someone there cutting hair, but a lot of other people were going over there just to hang out and watch movies. We were supposed to go at 2:00 but I was going to be late, so I just met up with them there. I rode the number 7 bus from outside my building down to the Gostiny Dvor area. For some reason I couldn’t figure out, the bus was completely packed. It was about 2:30 on a Saturday afternoon. Why were there so many people on this bus? It’s so unpredictable, whether or not a bus is going to have a lot of people on it or not. So I got really hot wearing my big jacket on the hot crowded bus, and by the time I got off my hair was all gross and sweaty. I walked down the street to where the apartment supposedly was. It was in an area I hadn’t been before, and it was incredibly nice right around there. It’s right next to the Fontanka and some other canal, so there are all these nice bridges everywhere and some palace was nearby and a great church and all this stuff was right outside of their apartment. I couldn’t figure out how to get in, so I called Bryce and he explained. I got in the building and made it up to the 5th floor where their apartment is and came in to find a pretty big group there already. Oh man, this apartment is absolutely amazing. Apparently Nathan and Mila bought it back around 1989 for super cheap and fixed it up and everything, and now Nathan says it’s definitely valued at over a million dollars. Mila did all the interior design, and it has been featured in Russian home and garden-type magazines. The place is just huge, way bigger than my house in Corvallis even. I’m not even sure how many rooms this thing has. I don’t think I even found them all. There are lots of rooms off of rooms that loop around other rooms and seem to go forever. There are at least 3 bathrooms, a huge open kitchen and dining room, various family-type rooms and guest rooms, and the best part, an entertainment room, that’s basically like a little movie theater. There’s a big pull-down screen with a projector and a big media center with DVD and VHS and a stereo and all that, with surround-sound speakers. Incredible! So, we all hung out there for the day not getting haircuts and watching “Indiana Jones: the Last Crusade” and “Wedding Crashers,” drinking soda and ordering pizza. It was pretty fun and relaxing, I have to say. After the last movie we all left, and I headed home with Vickie. I ended up staying in the whole rest of the night. It sounded like a lot of people were staying in, and I was pretty tired and still a little sick, so it seemed like the thing to do. I don’t even remember what I did the whole night. Just listening to music and messing around on the computer, I guess. Sunday morning I woke up to the most gorgeous sunny day I had seen in a long time. The temperature was up to around positive 10 Celsius (about 50 Fahrenheit), which felt so warm. I ate some quick bliny, and then went with Vickie to meet up with Katie and Tom down on Nevskiy to walk around and take advantage of the beautiful weather. It was my first day in St. Petersburg where I left the house without my big green jacket. I just wore a light jacket-thing and I didn’t feel cold at all the whole day! The three of them wanted to go walk around the Church on Spilled Blood because they hadn’t seen it up close yet. We walked around and took some picture and ended up in that little souvenir fair behind the church. There was a guy selling all kinds of old soviet pins and buttons that all looked pretty cool, and I’d like to go browse there some more and maybe buy some. He did talk me into buying one thing, though. There was a little pack of old police Identification cards, drivers licenses, and carious other official documents, all confiscated or stolen or something at some point in the 70’s or 80’s and they somehow found their way to this souvenir stand. They seemed kind of cool but neither Tom nor I were really that interested. The guy said 300 for the set at first, and we definitely didn’t want to pay that much for it. He kept working it down and I still wasn’t all that interested. I finally took him up on it when he gave me the price of 100 rubles, plus he threw in two pins of a red star with the hammer and sickle in the middle of them. It was a pretty good deal, I think. We browsed for a little while longer, but we didn’t really want to by anything more right now. We were all getting a little hungry and I convinced everyone to come with me to try this Russian chain-restaurant place called Yolki Palki right off Nevskiy. In front of the restaurant, gathered around a statue of Gogol, there was a pro-Chechnya demonstration going on. We picked up some literature from them and headed into the restaurant. It was a little bit corny inside, but the food was pretty good if not small. I got some pelmeny with sour cream that was really good. The others got some shish kebabs and French fries. After lunch I got the guys to follow me onto the metro and two stops away to go check out the Alexander Nevskiy Monastery at the far end of Nevskiy Prospekt where nobody ever goes. We got some ice cream before he went in the monestary, of course. There were all kinds of crazy limbless beggers inside the monastery walls that we had to skirt by, and then found out that you had to pay a fee to get into the real part of the monastery, so we walked around in the free part for a while but it wasn’t very interesting, so we headed up Nevskiy back to Ploshchad Vostanniya. I had never been on this part of Nevskiy before. It’s the part that nobody ever bothers checking out, but it was pretty nice, especially on a day like that. We walked by a music and movie store called Titanik and decided to check it out. They had a lot of good stuff, and I ended up buying an official copy of that big popular Russian movie Dnevnoi Dozor and a movie that I saw on the shelf staring my idol Viktor Tsoy from Kino. I had no idea what they movie was about or if it was any good, but come on, it’s a movie staring Viktor Tsoy. That’s all that needs to be said. It’s called “Igla” (Needle). I can’t wait to watch the whole thing. Vickie and Katy bought some things too and after a big long hassle of the cashier trying to make change for Katie’s 500 and trying to figure out how to use the credit card machine, we were off. Tom and Vickie went to study for a test, so Katie and I rode the metro home. I caught up on all my homework, watched Dnevnoi Dozor (though I had to find a way around the fact that it is an official DVD and my computer was giving me a hard time about trying to play DVDs that are formatted for a different region) and talked to the family on the phone for a while. It was cool to watch that movie because a pretty large portion of it was filmed at / takes place in and around the hotel I stayed at in Moscow. I don’t remember what time I got to bed at, but it was probably pretty late. Today they weather turned a complete 180 from yesterday, and on the way to school it was like a blizzard, with huge and heavy snowfall and howling, bone-chilling winds. At school I got my grammar test back (B+) and had a strange phonetics class with only a few of us in there. That teacher definitely likes me the most because I can usually pronounce all the different sounds and emulate her sounds pretty well, but I know everybody else really hates that class and can’t stand her. Luckily, after class the weather got a little better. The skies were pretty cloudy, but not completely overcast. We got a few brief sun breaks here and there. I was thinking about finally going to the Hermitage because it is on my way to the university where I teach English, but I talked to Kenny and he said he was going for a walk to find some cool stuff, so I decided to tag along with him. He wanted to find the building that used to house the Leningrad KGB offices and now houses some other police group or whatever. We walked down I street I hadn’t been down before and saw some pretty cool stuff. The weather was pretty cold, but not too bad at all. That one building was actually pretty boring to look at, but we kept going to find some other buildings that Kenny had wanted to see. We walked right by where Nathan and Mila’s apartment is, and then through a park-ish area and saw an eternal flame burning. We warmed up by it for a bit and took some pictures. We found a broom in the bushes, the kind a witch would ride on, so I took a picture of Kenny riding on it like a witch, He carried it around with us for a bit but then got sick of it and threw it in another bush. We went to this place called the Marble palace but didn’t go in. Apparently it’s a branch of the State Russian Museum. There was a really cool monument to Aleksandr III out front. We then tried to check out this place called the Summer Palace, but it was in this park that we discovered to be “closed for drying,” so we headed on down towards the Hermitage instead. Kenny took off to head home, but I still had to kill some time before my English class. I thought I might as well check out the Hermitage finally just for a bit before the class, but quickly discovered / realized that, like almost all museums in Russia, it is closed on Mondays. So, I stood around in Palace Square for a bit, looking at the pillar and imagining what the place must have looked like back on Bloody Sunday 101 years ago. I heard recently that the huge pillar in the middle of the square isn’t attached to its pedestal by anything, it’s just resting on it. It’s kind of a scary thought, actually. I had never really hung around in Palace Square before, or at least not since all the snow melted away. It really is an amazing square, considering all the things that surround it. It’s so big and open that when you walk around you can’t really hear your own footsteps, because there really is nowhere for the sound to echo. It’s just so quite and solitary walking around there, it’s eerie. I used a pay toilet and then sat on a bench for a little while watching some people feed birds. I was getting cold and decided to walk around some more. So I headed for the bridge to Vasilevsky Island and the university. As I was crossing the bridge, I was lucky enough to see some of the alst big chunks of ice on the river below slip free and drift away under the bridge and away to the gulf. I thought that all the big chunks right there were going to slip away, but they kind of wedged themselves together and stuck for a while. I got bored waiting for them to free themselves so I moved on. I bet they’ve broken free by now. There was a group of guys walking around and standing on some chunks or ice near the edge and taking pictures of each other. It looked dangerous. I walked around on the tip of the Streltsy (the “nose” of Vasilevsky Island) and took some pictures of the river, the ice, and the buildings in all directions. I then headed over to the university the back way and entered through the back too. Some bad-ass security guard tried to stop me from getting in, but I just flashed my student ID and he had to let me in. That ID wields a lot of power sometimes. I got lost on the university grounds down these were back lots and dilapidated buildings. I heard marching troops or something in the distance. It was really eerie. Some women stationed at some sort of booth asked me what I was doing and I said I didn’t know where I was. She kindly guided me back to the main university area, and after making a few more wrong terms I finally found the right building. I still had a little time to kill, so I sat on a bench outside for a while and listened to a little music. It turned out that the teacher of my class was subbing for another one again today, so I had to teach the class on my own for the first part again. They gave me a re-telling of a little text about Valentine’s day, and we did some grammar exercises from the book. They asked me some questions, I told them about my run-in with the militsia and showed them my passport. They were very interested in looking at it, and were baffled by the concept of a middle name (They have them in Russia, but they are much more important than in America and are always derived from the father’s first name). They wanted to play some games, so we did a round of hang-man, then the game where you name a word that starts with the letter that ended the word before it, then a round of the game where you say, “We are going on a picnic and we are bringing…” and you have to foods for each letter of the alphabet and keep going all the way through. That brought us up through the end of class. I think they really enjoyed playing games instead of having a real class period. Who wouldn’t? I left around 8:00, took the bus home, ate some dinner, did some homework and started writing this update. Next thing you know, it’s almost 12:30 and it’s time for me to go to bed. I’m not sure when or how I will get this post up. Soon and somehow, are the answer’s I’m shooting for. See you later.

A quick post made during my 10 minute break from class

I wrote a post the other night, but since I lost my thumb drive I haven't been able to post it. I'll find a way soon. This weekend I am going to Helsinki, Finland, so look for another post about that somewhere down the line. Peace out.

Лети, последний рубль!

Hey. It’s Thursday night and I’ve been home sick for most of the day. I’ve been feeling kind of sick for the last few days but it wasn’t bad enough to miss school until today. Well, I didn’t miss a whole day of school. I had a big grammar test in my first class that I couldn’t really miss, so I went to school for that and then went home before my second class. I spent the rest of the day listening to music and watching movies from my Gaidai DVD. I’m going to try and make it to school tomorrow though, because if I stay home my host-mom pretty much won’t let me leave the house for anything and I already have plans to meet with Emily in the afternoon and I’d like to do something tomorrow night too. But anyway, things have been pretty cool otherwise. On Tuesday after school I used the internet (oh yeah, I seem to have lost my thumb-drive, with which I am able to post pictures and blog entries at school. I think I left it in the computer lab, but the guy who works there says he didn’t see it. I’m sure it’s long gone by now. I may have to look into buying another one) and then tagged along with Matt and Bryce who were going to KFC. I hung out with them there for a while and then Matt and I caught a bus home. A lot of people were planning on going to the Red Lion that night (you know, Tuesday being champagne night and everything), and I was kind of on the fence as to whether or not I was going to go. I was already starting to feel a little sick at that point, so I thought maybe I shouldn’t go. At any rate, I went home first and did some homework, ate dinner, and relaxed a little bit. At one point I decided that I was definitely not going to go, and had resigned myself to staying in for the night. After messing around on my computer for a little bit, though, I suddenly had a second-wind of sorts, and decided that I would head out to the Red Lion after all. I rode a bus down and trudged through the slushy park and got to the bar around 9:00. I couldn’t find everybody at first, but finally found them in the back room where the dancing goes on later. EVERYBODY was there. I mean, must of the people from my program (most of the ones I usually hang out with, anyways), plus the British girls, plus Stacey’s friend Megan from the day before with some of the people from the group she was traveling with, although they had to leave about a half hour later to catch their train to Moscow. I received a very warm welcome when I arrived because most of the people had already been there for an hour or two and had all thought I probably wasn’t going to come at that point. So, that was really nice. I started immediately chatting with everybody and dancing in groups to the cover band (not Soulgarden this time) and having a really good time. I met a lot of new people and got to talk to a lot of my friends too. Some of the British girls were participating in this “G8 Youth Summit” thing this week and so we hadn’t seen them in school. Alice was there and had to write a speech that night to give the next day about Foreign Security in the EU or something like that. A lot of us started taking turns writing in her notebook and coming up with speeches for her. Tom wrote some big thing about the US and the EU being terrorist organizations or something, just being weird. I have to say, I think the speech I wrote for her was really funny. I tried to write it as if it were being written by a really dumb sixth grader or something who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Let’s see if I can try and recreate it:

Europe. Union. Foreign. Security. These are words that go together like “words,” “that,” “go,” and “together.” The European Union is a union in Europe made up of many European countries, but not all of them. It is important that the EU be secure for foreigners because if it weren’t then it would be really, really, really bad. We need to make sure it is safe and secure so that nobody dies. This can be achieved in many ways. Thank you, and good night.

I kept telling Alice that, “I took care of the speech for you, just read it. You don’t need to worry about it.” I probably thought it was a lot more funny than anybody else (except Tom maybe), but who cares? Peter David and I got in a text-message battle arguing about Bob Seger. I told Stacey that she was the most unpretentious person I have ever met (which I absolutely meant) and it seemed to make her really happy to hear. “More than I could possibly understand,” in fact, so that made me feel good to know I had given her a compliment that she really appreciated. So, everybody was having a great time and everything, but that there was an incident that kind of put a damper on the evening for everyone. And you know who was at the root of this incident? Yes, you guessed it, the Russian militsia. Let me explain. So, Matt had been drinking and every thing like all of us, and some times when people drink it makes them have to throw up, right? So, Matt feels like he has to throw up, so he heads for the bathroom, but since the place was crowded and the bathrooms are pretty far from where we were sitting, he wasn’t able to make it and ended up throwing up on the floor. I might have mentioned before that there are militsia guys who hang around in the front of the Red Lion all the time. Well, once they found out what had happened, apparently, they were all over Matt and asked to see his documents. He gave them his student ID and his Spravka because his passport is being re-registered right now. I wasn’t around when all this happened, but when Abby came back to the table and told me that the militsia was trying to kick Matt out, I ran to the scene. I didn’t understand what had happened at first. Matt was by the bar and Bryce and a few others were around him consoling him because he was really upset. Nobody was telling me what happened exactly. Ruth told me that the militsia had Matt’s documents and wasn’t giving them back and that I should try and talk to them and get and see what the problem was. I said to one of them, “excuse me, is there some sort of problem?” and he said, “Of course!” I asked him, “please, then, tell me,” and he took me around the corner and showed my Allisonn on the floor cleaning something up. I thought maybe at first it was just a beer that got knocked over, but then once Ruth explained some more she told me that Matt had thrown up and now the militsia was hold Matt’s documents ransom. She said I should stand with Matt and Bryce and look menacing, and while I was standing on of the militsia guys came up to us and said that it was going to cost a thousand rubles to get the documents back. That’s completely ridiculous, of course. We decided we should get Tsveti to come talk to them because she speaks Russian way better than the rest of us. We figured she could find out why they were charging us and maybe get the amount reduced. She talked to them and they told her that the fee was to compensate the bar for the money that was lost as a result of Matt throwing up, which makes no since. Allisonn cleaned it all up by herself, and nobody left the bar because of it either, as they claimed. Plus it’s so obvious that none of the money they were asking for was going to go back to the bar, and that the whole thing was just a lame excuse for a bribe. We stood around for a long time trying to think of a way to get it lowered or other ways to get the documents back or something. I wish I could have just told them, “You know, a few of your pals in the militsia happened to take 1000 rubles from me just the other day. Why don’t you go ask them for that money and then we’ll all be even?” After a while I think Bryce just got fed up with the whole thing and paid the guys their 1000 rubles just to be done with the whole thing, and Matt got his documents back. Most of were pretty pissed off at the militsia and at the whole situation, so most of us were ready to leave after that. By this time it was about 12:30, so everybody would have to take a chasnik. There were quite a few of us who needed to go back to the island, and I thought it would be taking one with Vickie, Nick, and Allisonn, but then Nick and Vickie really wanted to go to McDonalds, so we decided to walk to the one at Vasileostrovskaya which isn’t nearly as far as it might seem to most people. We had a nice walk over and I got to talk to Allisonn for a while, which was really good because I felt like we were on bad terms for a while, but I guess we never really were and at least now everything is cool. We got to McDonalds and most of us ordered a little food. We stood around eating it and were just about to hail a chasnik when this group of guys came up and started talking to us. I guess it was my doing partially. There was one guy who was looking at us and kind of chuckling to himself, and I looked at him and asked him, “what?” And so from there it was basically an open invitation for them to start talking to us. This was all really good though, and these guys weren’t nearly as drunk and sketchy as the guys I had met on Sunday night (which happened just a few feet away. I don’t know what it is about that area, but I have met all kinds of weird and crazy people right around that McDonalds). There were four guys and I think they were all about our age. One was pretty drunk and hyper and kept giving us swigs of his bottle of champagne. After talking to them for a little bit, of course, they asked us to come drink with them. Most of us were down with the idea for the most part, and those who weren’t were pretty much forced to tag along. We walked with them just down the walk-way a little bit and stood next to the fountain near Kofe Khaus. One of them bought us all some beers and we stood around talking for quite a while. One guy spoke English pretty well, and the others would try to interject some when they knew it, but for the most part we all spoke Russian. One guy (Ilya) was originally from the city Naryan-Mar, which is way up in the north near the Arctic Ocean. One of them was studying physics at the university (His name was Yevgeny, which the English equivalent of is Eugene, and I when he introduced himself as “Eugene” I told him that was the name of the town I was from and he got excited). They were all really cool and we talked about Russian movies, literature, music, and all kinds of stuff. I sang a few lines of the Antoshka song with one of the guys named Dmitri, and Yevgeny told me the name of some contemporary Russian author that he really wanted me to read (unfortunately, I have forgotten the name. I think it was two or three syllables long and started with an “s,” though). I also asked him about a lot of different Russian bands that I have gotten into / want to get into. He recommended a band called Mumiy Troll that I had heard about but have not yet heard. Apparently they are really good live. He didn’t really seem to think too highly of any other Russian bands, though. The fourth guy, Tomor (I think that was his name) but us all a second beer after a while. Some creepy woman with a broken noise came up and asked for a cigarette, but the guys shooed her away. Ilya took some pictures of all of us with his fancy camera phone. Everybody exchanged numbers except me, because I was talking to Evgeny while they were doing that and when I asked for his number he said that he had lost his phone. After 2:00 most of us were getting anxious to get home. Basically Nick, Vickie and I were ready to go, but Allisonn wanted to stay longer. She had, lets say, kind of gotten “involved” with the Dmitri kid, and they were kind of off on their own little thing. We started telling the guys that we really needed to go and they kept insisting that we go walking along the river with them, and Dmitri, in an embrace with Allisonn at this point, kept walking with her further and further down the street. Evgeny actually picked Vickie up at one point and I had to hold him back to keep them from walking to the river. It was really difficult to get everyone together, what with them working against us and Allisonn readily going along with them. But, after a bit of a struggle, we finally pulled her away from Dmitri’s arms andgot our entire group together and headed back to the main street to get a chasnik. We said by to the guys and told them thayt we would call them to hang out soon. After a while they started following us to our chasnik, and we had to put up another small little fight to all make it into the car. It was fun h anging out with them, but it definitely got kind of weird at the end. So, the chasnik took us home and everybody got home safe. Pretty wild and crazy for a Tuesday night, huh? Wednesday was much less crazy, though I did do some interesting things. There was a free lunch for all the CIEE students that had something to do with the delegation of US professors that was here to evaluate the program. I’m not really sure why, but I didn’t question the free food. I talked to one of the professors who teaches at Lewis and Clark in Portland. She said it was 17 degrees Fahrenheit in Portland right now (or, then I guess). Was that true? I didn’t really believe her. I stuck around for a little while and then headed home for a bit. Remember, I had been feeling a little bit sick this whole time. I got home and did some homework for a while and almost fell asleep at one point, but couldn’t really take a nap because I had to go teach English to my new class at 6:00. I didn’t really feel like going at that point, but I couldn’t just skip it. So, I rode a marshrutka over to the university and waited around for a while until I could find out where to go or what to do. The secretary finally found me and told me which room to go to. This class is made up of college professors who want to learn English for whatever reason. I think for most of them it is a real asset to their careers. Oh yeah, and of course I teach this class all by myself (they have a real teacher, but when I’m there it’s just me and them). There were five students in the class, all of them middle-aged women (except one, who was probably in her late 20’s). I asked them what their fields were, and they all were involved in completely different subjects. One was a radio-physicist. One was a biologist specializing in genetics. One was a sociologist. One was a German language specialist. The last was an economist. It was so weird to have this room full of incredible smart people, but to be teaching them something that to me is so simple and basic. I mean, it seems so weird to hear a radio-physicist (I don’t even know what that is!) to be stumbling over words and grammar constructions from a textbook. You know what I mean? And, you would think that having a room full of adults would be a lot less awkward than a room full of teenagers, but you’d be wrong. I think most of the people in this class were much more shy about speaking up than the students in my teenage class. It also felt strange teaching teachers, to be exerting the same authority over them as they usually do over students like me. It just seemed like such a huge role reversal. They were just finishing up a chapter on “attraction,” that talked about dating and stuff like that in British society. The book was published in England, so the cultural aspects integrated into the book (there is a lot of that) is very British-centric. For example, an exercise we did involved looking at the lyrics from a song by the group All Saints. Never heard of them? Most Americans probably haven’t, or at least don’t remember them anymore. Fortunately for the class, I did remember them, and remembered the actual song that was included in the book. They were a British girl group that had a minor hit in the US back around ’97 called “Never Ever,” which I remember was pretty catchy. They must be somewhat popular in England still, at least enough to be included in this book. There were also a lot of British spellings that I felt obligated to point out every time and give the American variation (for example: “realise,” and “programme”). We finished up that chapter and began the next one on the topic of “genius.” They read a short article about the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain, and about Frida Kahlo. There were some exercises dealing with art and how to talk about it, and we talked for a while about the artists that they liked. The economics professor seemed to really like art, and went on about Matisse for a while. When there was a subject she liked to talk about she could go on and on in near fluency, it seemed to me, but when it came to answering questions in the exercises she was very reluctant to answer. We also talked about famous buildings and monuments in Russia and the US. The radio-physicist talked about seeing the famous statue of the Motherland in Volgograd. They asked me if I had ever seen the Statue of Liberty, and I told them about the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and about Mount Rushmore. All in all, I think the class went pretty well, despite some moments of awkward silence. I think the students respect me well enough and I enjoyed teaching them. Sometimes it can be a little hard when they don’t know a word and I don’t know the Russian equivalent, or when they have questions about the terms of certain grammatical structures in English and I have no idea what they are called. I mean, of course, I know how to use all the grammatical structures correctly just from experience and having spoken it my whole life, but I’ve never actually studied English grammar and don’t know how to actually explain it. You know what I mean? But, everything works itself out and I think the students understand everything in the end. After the class was over (it’s three hours long, by the way) I waited for the bus stop outside, and one of my students was waiting too. It was the young one, who is also the one who studies sociology. She may not be an actual professor, I think she said something about being an assistant of some kind, but does actually teach herself as well. I believe her name is Marina (or perhaps just Maria). We talked for a bit while we waited for the bus. She told me that she was from Buryatia, which is a republic within the Russian Federation way out in Siberia next to Lake Baikal. She is from the capital, Ulan Ude. The Buryats are ethnically Asian, and so Marina doesn’t look Russian at all but completely Asian. She was very nice and was interested in hearing about the US and Oregon and all that. She has been living in St. Petersburg for six years. It turns out she works somewhere in the same building where I go to school (it’s a big building, though) and lives somewhere close to me because she rides my same bus, Bus 147 came and of course we both got on. Nobody really likes to talk on the bus, so our conversation kind of ended once we got on, but when she did speak to me a tiny bit she did it in Russian, because I think she didn’t want the people around her to hear her speaking English. I got off before her and said “see you next Wednesday.” She seemed really cool and I look forward to talking to her more in the future. At home I had to study for my big grammar test today, and by the end I was feeling totally exhausted and pretty sick. I got to bed around midnight, which is earlier than normal these days. This morning it was really rough getting up. I was having a dream that I was in Russia just like I am and in the same program and everything, but that I had signed up beforehand for a second program of some kind for some reason that started about halfway through the other one, so I had to leave my program in the middle of classes and everything and go join this other program with a bunch of new students who were just arriving. I was at their orientation and all that and I was just thinking, “why am I here? Why did I sign up for this new program? I already went through all this stuff, I belong back in the other group.” It was very strange. SO I roused myself out of bed and made it to school just to take that stupid grammar test. I think I did alright on the whole. There was one part that I didn’t understand very well and took a long time to complete. I probably got it all wrong too. But the rest of it I feel pretty confident about. I hung around in the hall with everyone after classes for a while but then slipped out before the second class and caught the bus straight home. I’ve just been taking it easy all day. Like I said, I’m going to try to make it to class tomorrow. I think I’ll be fine. I’m supposed to meet Emily at Soiree tomorrow, so at least I’ll be able to post this entry without my thumb drive for now, but it might get harder to manage later on. We’ll see how it goes. I might be going to Moscow next Friday to go to a Motorhead concert. I’ll keep you posted. Later.