the scavenger hunt

We found this old Russian vacuum cleaner on the 4th floor of the hotel.

Today we began with b-fast in the café - I had hrechka (pictured), which is basically buckwheat porridge, that I used to eat every day in Ukraine. Then we did a scavenger hunt around the city with some of the year-long students as our guides. On the hunt, we bought Russian cell phones (the guy at the counter empathized with my understanding being better than my speaking haha) at more blini (I got try some with red caviar!! yum!), and got lost in park (pictured). Then they had a host family meeting (everyone else is being picked up tomorrow), which was completely in Russian. And so it begins...

Another full day! And we haven't even eaten dinner yet...

Last random thing I don't want to forget: the lamps here are the coolest I've ever seen - every place I go seems to be something totally unique - one had lightbulbs with wings!

the longest day ever

After many a toil and trouble, we have finally made it successfully to St. Petersburg! We left Washington yesterday around 5:15 pm to fly to Frankfurt. I ended up being seat buddies with our RD, which was actually pretty useful because I got to ask him about the program and the trip and such. Plus we harmonized to the engine before we took off, so that was some quality bonding time.

The 7-and-a-half hour flight wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. I watched Paranormal Activity just to see what all the fuss was about. Throughout almost the entire movie, I thought it was kind of creepy, but not as scary as I'd heard it described - until the end. I won't ruin it for anyone that has seen it, but I'm pretty sure I scared everyone around me with my sudden jerk-and-gasp gesture.

The transfer to the flight to St. Petersburg was pretty uneventful - there were definitely a lot fewer people on that flight and the food was much fresher though (german breakfast - hoorah!) The real drama came when we arrived and found that all but about 5 or 6 of the group had a missing checked bag. So we all had to go into this intimidating closed room to meet with a Russian woman to describe our bag to her - and her english wasn't so great so right away we were forced to start practicing our Russian. We still don't have our bags yet, but they SAY that they are usually good about it getting it to us in the same day... but it is already 8:05 and no knocks yet..

We got money and dinner (blini and crab salad and tea for about $3!) today, but haven't had time to do too much else - and not everyone has warm enough clothes for a walking tour of the city yet.. Cross your fingers they come soon... I took a few rough pics of the hotel and the city.. I kind of thought that the stereotypes about all the fur coats and fur hats and stone faces were an exaggeration, but from what I saw today, they are not at all!

Promise to have better pics tomorrow!

getting oriented: day dos

Aaah, finally some free time...

Today was a pretty full day - here's a brief timeline:

6 am - Kate and I woke up to go use the fitness room, which was busier than I expected considering the hour.
7 am - Embassy suite's famed make-your-own omelettes
9am-3pm - A bunch of scary lectures and form signing
3-5 pm - Listening and reading test... thank goodness we are not being graded!
5-7 pm - Embassy suite's famed cocktail hour with free drinks! If only I'd been born 5 months earlier. But I had a Shirley Temple, which was a sufficient substitute.
7 pm - Dinner at Bua, a Thai restaurant with our city group.. I had chicken and peanut sauce, which was lovely, but it made me sweat. I will probably have bad dreams tonight. I took some pictures of my food and the folks at my table, which I'll be able to post later when my laptop can access the internet.

And now we're all back and on our own again. Time to go charge things......

getting oriented

We just got back from our first meeting with the whole group at the American Councils building. I enjoyed a lovely dinner of ravioli, veggie pizza, and scrumptious bread roll while we got to know the other kids going to Russia and our resident director.

Highlights of the meeting:
- found out about an internet plug-in modem that supposedly you can buy to use internet over the phone system at any time
- was relieved to discover that we will NOT be sailing on the Volga River over Spring break(now Grandma can breathe easier :-)), but did not actually find out what the big trip is... apparently, it's a surprise
- vowed to the group that I would learn to sing the Russian national anthem and sing it for them at the end of the program... a promise I am likely to regret later
- Kaitlin and I found out that we are the only ones in our group staying in the hotel, but there might be students staying there from last semester as well

Now it's 8:50 and we are free, but we don't know what to do.. everyone went to their rooms for the most part, but we are going to explore a bit and hopefully everyone else will come out of hiding at some point....

Stay tuned for getting oriented day 2....