weekend adventures

our friend, Cornelia aka Corn, and her host brother/love interest, Anton
Catherine Palace - up close

Park in Pushkin
at the Shamrock Bar

woowaah monday again! and it's been a pretty wild weekend indeed, so this should be a pretty interesting entry....

Friday night I was supposed to go to a concert with my tutor, but she got sick (told me she had a pretty crazy fever and such - I think she even described her sickness as попитерский, meaning typical of St. Petersburg, though I might be remembering the word wrong..) so I suddenly had a free night. So I checked to see what everyone in the group was doing and it turned out that some of my friends were going to go back to the Irish bar, Shamrock, that I had tried to go to on St. Patty's Day, but couldn't find - so I jumped on the opportunity to check it out.

It was a pretty cool bar, despite being a little overpriced. It was just a small group of us of about 5 so we were just drinking cider and talking for a while. Then a couple of Russians heard us speaking English and asked us if we wanted to come and have a drink with them at their table - so we did.. They ended up being pretty cool - I'm pretty sure they were all grad students studying engineering or law, and they bought us drinks, so that's always a plus :-). But then, Cheryl noticed that the American goalie from the Russian hockey team СКА (whose game we went to on an excursion) was at the bar. Background info: On St. Patty's Day, Cheryl had actually met Ash, the aforementioned goalie at Shamrock, and he had apparently taken a liking to her and paid the bill for their entire group! So when she saw him on Friday, she introduced us all to him, another Canadian hockey player (although I'm not sure if he was actually apart of CKA) and another guy that maybe was the bodyguard (?). They were nice enough - basically, your standard athletes. They kind of stole us away from our Russian friends though, and I felt bad, so when the Russians were leaving I exchanged contact info with them, so that we could keep in touch with them. We ended up being the last ones at Shamrock with the hockey players and, yet again, they paid for everyone's drinks. And somehow, don't ask me how, we ended up going with them to their apartment afterwards, attempting to make macaroni and cheese for them, and passing out on their couch. We all woke up at 7 the next morning and snuck out while the hockey players were still asleep in awe of the craziness of the evening.

I ended up getting home when my family was leaving for Leila's judo competition - Nadia kind of chuckled and shook her finger at me, but that was it. So I slept for about about an hour and then got back up and got ready to go to Pushkin. A group of us had planned during the week to go to the city, Pushkin, on a mini-excursion during the day on Saturday, and even though I wasn't feeling in the best of health, there was no way that I was going to miss it. So with a mild headache and some pretty massive bags under my eyes, I made my way to the metro stop at Moskovskaya.

From the metro, we took a 40 minute marshrootka to Pushkin, and by the time we got there I was feeling a lot better. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't wonderful - it was pretty cold and snowy - but we visited the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe Selo and it was beautiful! I unfortunately forgot my camera in my coat check, so I can only describe to you how magnificent the inside of it was. Pretty much all of the walls were lined with gold and mirrors, and in the great hall, there was a huge ceiling mural! They also had a bunch of tables set up with fake feasts that looked really appetizing :-9. But I think my favorite part of our exploration of the palace was in the exhibition hall downstairs, where they had this crazy painting of the palace during WWII, when there was a lot of destruction. It was pretty shocking because on the opposite wall was a painting of the palace during a summer day before the war.

After we had had a sufficient stroll around town, we got some borshch at a cafe and headed for home. When I got home, my exhaustion hit me all of a sudden and I ended up passing out at 7:30 pm! But it was a good thing because I had agreed to go to mass with two of the girls from the group at the English service at 9:30 (I usually go to the Russian one at 12). The mass was fine, but I definitely prefer the Russian mass - the singing is MUCH better and somehow I feel less like a foreigner with all the Russians surrounding me. We did meet a graduate student from an African country who was studying Russian in St. Petersburg after mass though. Then we had breakfast together at a cafe and headed back home to do some hw.

On Sunday night, my tutor had finally healed up and we arranged to meet at 8 pm at Dacha, before she had work at 10. When I got there, I was happy to see that Anna and Sasha (her friends whom we'd hung out with last weekend) had come too. Anna ended up having to leave pretty early because her father needed computer help, but she said that she wanted to invite me to her apartment this weekend to eat Armenian food! We'll see if it actually happens, but I hope it does! I talked with Sasha (my tutor) until she had to work and told my stories from the weekend and found out a little bit more about how she got her job as a DJ. For the rest of the night, Sasha (aka Alexander) stayed and talked with me while Sasha (my tutor) dj-ed. It was kind of sad because he is going back to his home city up north for a month on Tuesday to earn some money before he returns back to Petersburg, so this is the last time we'll get to hang out with him for a while. But he was really sweet and kept me amused for the entire night, talking about Russian politics, Russian drinks, music, snowboarding, and he even taught me some Russian slang - my favorite was the word for "sick!" = "жесть!" I didn't end up leaving until 12 am, but I had finished all my homework, so I was ok for class this morning.

Today was a pretty regular class day. My grammar teacher laughed and called me a hooliganka when I made up a silly sentence about recommending a student coming to Petersburg not to wear a bathing suit on the street. She also went on a mini-rampage about how capitalism is a system "not for the man" and how during soviet times, life was safer. ooh Tatyana...

Other than that, we just had our regular Monday meeting and we found out that the excursion this week to the Baltika beer brewery is meeting at 9:40 - so it seems we're going to be having pivo for breakfast, hmmm...

Just played another marathon game of simultaneous candyland/russian-card-game-that-i-still-don't-understand and now i'm pretty tired.. the girls have spring break now, so I'm pretty jealous - I think I'll try to get a good start on my cochinyenya for baltika tonight since we're meeting with some russian students at a bar tomorrow evening

пузыркьи and mini-пятницу's

Animal cruelty
a very large cannon
inside peter & paul's
Peter & Paul's Fortress
When I came home Monday night, there was this huge hole in front of the apartment - it's still there and noone knows why (my host mother said they were "doing something")...

hooray for tuesday! it's always like a mini-friday for us since we only have excursions on wednesdays (we go to the Russian museum tomorrow). So I figured I'd take the free time to share with the world all this weekend's excitement in Petersburg.

On Saturday I had a pretty lazy day - I played legos with Alina (she is a pro car designer!) and just hung around for most of the day until I met with my tutor, Sasha. We met at the metro around 7:30 and then met up with her other friends that she had introduced me to at Dacha - Sasha (male version) and Anna (the Armenian) to go to Anna's apartment. It was an awesome night!

We first stopped at a big grocery store where they bought beer, food, and Jagermeister for the evening. Then we hailed a cab and drove to her apartment, which they explained to me was in, what they call a спальный район, literally the sleeping region, because it's one of those areas where lots of people just go home to sleep and then spend the day in the city center. But the apartment was beautiful! Maybe it's just because I've gotten so used to my tiny apartment, but Anna's place seemed so spacious and humongous to me - there was a huge living room, nice bathroom and kitchen, and a balcony! There, I met Anna's roommate, Lera, who I also really liked and their super friendly and adorable gray cat named Мурзырка (because cats here say "мур мур").

Then we all just basically sat in the kitchen chatting and making toasts the whole night. I asked my questions that we were required to ask 2 Russians for my politics class and that ended up being pretty funny.. The questions were about who currently was in local office in Petersburg and the purpose was really to show that most Russians don't know (or bother to know) who is in local office usually. But when I asked them, they all got really excited (I guess because they didn't know) and calling their friends who were involved with politics to see if they knew. Then Sasha, the guy, took my notebook, left the room for about 20 minutes, and returned with names. lol. I tried to explain that they could just say, "I don't know," but apparently they were not satisfied with that. The funny thing is when I gave my teacher their answers on Tuesday in class, only one of their answers were correct! But it was better than the rest of the class, whose interviewees pretty much all answered that they didn't know..

Then Sasha and I looked through a culture and entertainment magazine about current stuff going in Petersburg to see if there was anything interesting coming up that we could go to together. Now we're planning on going to a concert together on Friday! Sasha also made us some delicious bacon, cheese and tomato sandwiches halfway through the night.. We didn't end up leaving until about 2 in the morning! But they accompanied my all the way home and Sasha wouldn't even let me pay for my cab ride.. It was so refreshing to just be able to hang out at someone's home, rather than at a bar or even the dorm, and all of them were so fun to spend time with!

On Sunday, I met up with Brittany and two Russian girls that we met at one of the English-Russian discussion groups, Lena and Veronika to go to Peter and Paul's Fortress. There we got to see the tombs where all of the old tsars and the Romanovs are buried - I've never seen Brittany so excited since we've been in Russia! She's obsessed with the Romanovs so seeing their tombs was like fulfilling a life goal for her - she said that she wanted to come back every day! It was pretty awesome though. We also walked around a little bit on the frozen Neva River (everyone was doing it, so I'm pretty sure it was sturdy :-/)..

Monday was a regular class day again, but after class we had our weekly meeting with Nathan and he took our passports away :-( so we can't travel to anywhere really far away until we get them back (which probably won't be for another month or so).. Oh well. But we also found out officially that we are going to Sochi for our big trip at the end of April and meeting up with the Moscow and Vladimir groups there - that means a 46 hour train ride (which, in turn, means no shower, no modern toilets, and lots of bonding time)!

After the meeting, Max and I had "work" for our internship at Lenfilm. But on this particular day they wanted us to help with this series of old American films that they are presenting at an indie theater every week with Russian subtitles. And we didn't actually end up doing any real work - they gave us a little tour of place, where we got to see where they project the films from and meet the lady that's in charge of the theater. But then they just had us watch the movie that was being shown that week. It was called, Wings, and it was about these American soldiers that go to war and their relationships with one another and such. It was one of those movies where the entire film soundtrack is instrumental music and you have to read all of the dialogue, even in the English version. I thought it was decent, even though it felt really long - my favorite part was when one of the soldiers gets really drunk off champagne and all he can talk about is the bubbles that he keeps having visions of. Thus I learned the important Russian word, "пузырьки

(bubbles).

Welp, even though I started writing this on Tuesday, it's actually now Wednesday and we already went on our excursion to Russian museum. It was cool - just a quick little tour to see some of the older Russian works in the museum and then we went to lunch at a Japanese restaurant. We ended up staying for a really long time, I feel like it was about 3 hours, and then going to the пышки (a Russian doughnut, kind of like funnel cake) place that has 19-rouble coffee! Then I had my mid-semester evaluation meeting with Nathan. We got little report cards with comments from all of our teachers, and I'm apparently doing well, so I was glad :-).. My phonetics teacher said that I was a "well-wishing" girl that sang well, haha. I got 5's (like an A) in all of my classes, except for my elective, lingvokulturologia, which I got a 4 in. I was kind of surprised, because I feel like I'm one of the better students in that class, but she might just be a harder grader - I might ask her about it, but it's no big deal either way...

Now I've got to do some hw unfortunately - 4 hours of grammar tomorrow, yikes! But at least I can look forward to discussion group - tomorrow we're discussing body language :-). Пока!

за пятницу - последний день !

Finally friday, or последний день ("last day") as I've been hearing from my native Russian companions all day. Overall, the weekend ended pleasantly.

On Wednesday, a small group of us (about 9 total) went to a different banya and had a much better experience this time! It seemed like this banya was attached to a hotel and it had a bigger pool area, which had a mirror on the ceiling! I think the sauna was also a lot bigger. However, after I went in the sauna this time, I had some kind of allergic reaction (we think there might have been some kind of herb in the water because it smelled really good!) and my arm busted out with all these red dots. But they didn't hurt and disappeared after a couple of hours so no worries. Towards the end, we watched part of the Russian movie musical, Стиляги, which is basically like a Russian hybrid of Hairspray and Moulin Rouge (apparently, all the songs they used were taken from songs that were already popular in Russia before the film was made). I had to leave an hour earlier than everyone else because I had to work at my internship, so I didn't get to watch the whole thing, but at some point, I'd really like to see how it ends!

I got a little lost when I was trying to get myself back to the metro that we had arrived on, so I ended up walking to a different station pretty far away, but I left earlier enough so that I made it on time to work. Work was very chill again - we had a little trouble getting past the guard at first, but our boss smoothed over the situation and I don't think we'll have a problem next time. We just edited some more letters for them this time, but next time we work will be on Monday and we'll get to help out with this event that they're holding every week, where they showcase an old Hollywood movie with Russian subtitles at an indie theater in the city center. Sounded really interesting!

Yesterday was a long day because we had to make up a class that our teacher had cancelled. So we had 4 пара's instead of 3. But we basically just watched fairytale cartoons (two versions of a story about a frog princess), so it wasn't difficult, but I was pretty tired afterwards. We got some coffee quick at a Japanese restaurant before we headed over to the the Russian-American discussion group. This week's theme was Russian and English cuss words - I took notes :-).

Today during our conversation class we went to the рынок, a Russian market (kind of similar to our farmer's market), to practice shopping vocabulary. My task was to buy some tomatoes. My teacher said that this particular рынок wasn't as good as other ones, because normally you can haggle the price down, but this time all of the men were trying to swindle us. My friend, Brittany, bought some dried prunes and when the guy weighed it, the scale wasn't working right and he said that it weighed more than it actually did. So then my teacher and this other random Russian lady started scolding him for trying to cheat us, and he was like, "Oh, you women from the Soviet times never believe anything!" I was highly amused.

It snowed again today. Just when we thought spring had come and the everything was starting to melt away, we get a mini-blizzard. But that's St. Petersburg weather for you. Now I'm just chilling at home, no plans as of yet. Brittany was talking about possibly going to Peter and Paul's Fortress tomorrow, but I think it depends on the weather. I still haven't met with my tutor this week yet either, so maybe that will happen too... as always мы посмотрим.

bangcuts, bars, and ballets

Wow - is it really Wednesday already? I guess I've been a bad blogger this week! Anyhow our holiday weekend turned out to be really great! I hung out with the American students visiting from Vladimir on both Saturday and Sunday nights and we had a really fun time trading stories and what not...

On Saturday I walked over to the center of the city without using any form of public transportation but my feet and I was proud. When I got to Nevsky, I explored this little mini mall across the street from Gostiniy Dvor and discovered this awesome little section that sold quirky, unusual Russian doo-dads, where I found something that was perfect for my mother (it was a wallet that looked like two hands pressed together with the phrase, "Всё моё" threaded on to it). Then I stopped in at Dom Knigi to buy a book in Russian (I picked one by Gogol) and took myself to the Russia version of Subway! That was a feat in itself because I had to order all my ingredients in Russian, but I was successful and got everything I wanted! I basically just chilled there and attempted to read my Gogol until it was time to meet up with the other students.

That night we first went to the local laundromat/bar, Stirka. I had read about it in my guide book, but hadn't been there yet so I was pretty excited - it had a very chill atmosphere: it was small, but there was a DJ, a disco ball, a bunch of hipsters with dreads, a couple of groups playing Russian Scrabble, etc. And best of all, I ordered Kirschenbeer, which is basically just beer with cherry syrup - yum!

Then we went to the German bar that I had been hearing a lot of good things about from my friends in the program. It's a tiny, tiny bar, but extremely welcoming - when you open the entrance door, the bartender, Sasha, immediately starts calling you to, "Come in, come in! Join the crowd!" and so on.. We met the Vladimir group there and got to see our friend from ND, Jeff, for the first time since we'd been to Russia. It seemed like their group had gotten really close - we definitely want to try and go visit them some time this semester if we can ever get ourselves organized to travel!

On Sunday, my family went out for the morning, so I secretly ran the stairs (they told me it might upset the neighbors, but I do it anyway when they're not around hehe) and, drumroll, I don't know what came over me, but I gave myself a haircut.. My host mother had cut my bangs for me the day before, and, while she had done a good job, I decided that I wanted them a little bit shorter. After I had overcome that obstacle, I started looking at my layers and decided, what the heck, and trimmed them too. I was surprised at how liberating it was! And it actually turned out looking pretty good, if I do say so myself. I may never pay for a haircut again!

After that excitement I went to Mega, the HUGE mall, but made the mistake of going to the one that is super far away, not realizing that there is actually one pretty close to my home. But I found a lot of really good sales (70% off!) and bought myself a new hat, earmuffs, and fluffy scarf, as well as a new, bright green towel from IKEA. I also got my host sisters some gifts for the prazdnik on Monday (pens with a windmill on top and phone keychains).

When I got home, my host family was having a dinner party of sorts with one other family that they had invited over. It was the first time that I had ever seen them pull the table out (they put it in the living/computer/girl's bedroom) and have a meal all together. It reminded me of Thanksgiving :-) . And I got to experience the Russian tradition of toasting (a lot! my host father kept trying to get me to drink vodka, but I stuck with my wine - I swear those Russians are tanks with their national drink!).

After dinner, I went out to go meet the Vladimir group one last time before they went back. I took them to Dacha to go and see my tutor, Sasha, DJ and I think they really enjoyed it! We ended up staying even later than Sasha works, around 2:30 or so, so I had to take a cab home, but it was worth it. I also got to hang out a little bit with some of the people that Sasha had introduced me to last week, so that was nice too. At one point in the night, I ordered the Vladimir group a round of shots and Sasha's friends were like, "Do you want to be drunk?" I think that at first they thought I was buying the shots just for myself, but I cleared things up haha.

Monday was a fairly chill day - my host sisters had a lot of fun with their gifts and they got me a really cute shirt with a flower on it. Later on in the day, I went out to go buy a hair straightener and bought my host mother some mimosas from the street (they are EVERYWHERE on Women's Day here!), which she also seemed to like.

Yesterday was a regular class day, but we also had our excursion last night to go see the ballet, Swan Lake, at the Mikhailovsky Theatre. It was soo beautiful - I don't think I've seen a ballet since "The Nutcracker" so it was really neat to watch and listen to! The theatre itself was gorgeous also... After the show, a small group of us went to a small cafe for a little while to celebrate our friend, Nina's, 21st birthday. It was very chill, but a nice way to end the evening.

Today we are going to banya again (but we'll do it right this time ;-) ) and from there I have to go to work at my intership for a little while.. After that, depending on what my tutor says, I may be hanging out with her for a short time or possibly going to a karaoke bar for Nina's bday. Should be a pretty full day, but it's better than being bored...

Women's day weekend !

Aaaah another long weekend - thank you women's day! That's on Monday, so we get another day off. We were thinking about traveling some where, but our ND friends who are studying in Vladimir and Moscow decided to visit this weekend, so once again we remain in Piter.

All in all it has been a good week. On Tuesday we all went out to a bar since we didn't have class the next day and met up with some Germans that some people had met at the German bar a couple of nights ago. It turned out that they were going to the same hockey game that we were going to for our cultural excursion on Wednesday so we exchanged numbers and met up with them there for a little bit too.

The hockey game was a blast! We were right next to the super fan cheering section - i don't know how many times I heard the, "Только СКА и только победа!" (Only SKA, only victory!) The team we were rooting for ended up winning 6 to 4, I think. After the game, we all went to Dacha for a little bit since it was one of the student's 21st birthdays.

The next day we went to go and see Alice and Wonderland in Russian and I really enjoyed it, despite not really being able to understand all of the dialogue. But we saw it in 3d so the visuals were still really neat and Johnny Depp made for an entertaining Mad Hatter (Шлаппик in the russian version ;-)) .. Then I walked home with my friend Kolya and he ended up walking me all the way up to my apartment since I was kind of lost (surprise surprise). But he said something that kind of boggled my mind when we were talking about our apartments - I was telling him how my apartment was pretty small and old and there were just 3 rooms in addition to the kitchen and toilet. He then said that during Soviet times, there were probably 3 families sharing my apartment - 1 in each room! So an entire family could have been living in my tiny little room! Nutso... but really interesting!

Then Friday I gave a presentation on Woodstock for my conversation. I had been up pretty late finishing it up the night before, but I think it turned out pretty well - I played a piece of Jimi Hendrix's improv Star Spangled Banner and showed some pictures along with my powerpoint. Kaitlin did her presentation on Titanic and showed some of the dubbed Russian version of Titanic - that brought me back. And Brittany did her presentation on the Olympics.

After class I went to my internship with the film company, Lenfilm. When I told my host father where I worked, he told me that Lenfilm was like the Hollywood (but he pronounced it like Gollyvood, so I didn't understand at first) of St. Petersburg! Basically I just corrected the English part of their website and some letters they were sending out to English-speaking film makers about their summer film festival - very chill. But when we were getting ready to leave, they saw that my laptop was kind of sticking out of my purse and since they were worried about me having it stolen, they gave me a laptop bag to keep! I was sooo excited - I think they were pretty amused that I was so excited about it because they kept laughing at me when I was thanking them - but it's a really nice bag and I didn't have one here!

Then, last night after I congratulated mother on her bday, I went to a goodbye party for the Germans at one of their flats. The apartment was so cute - we all just congregated in their little yellow kitchen - it looked like a typical hipstery, city apartment with maps all hanging up on the walls and tons of homemade food everywhere! It was refreshing to go to house party again, and totally bizarre for me because I could hear Russian, English, and German all around me and kind of understand the gist of what everyone was saying! Made me feel pretty proud ;-)

And now it's a lazy Saturday morning again, going on the afternoon now actually. But my family always sleeps really late on the weekends, so I end up just relaxing a lot on weekend mornings and end up eating breakfast at like 12 :)

Today we should be meeting up with Jeff (our friend who's been in Vladimir) - he's apparently staying right across from the dorm! And I'm supposed to get together with my tutor some time tonight - yay! She wanted to get together on Thursday or Friday, but I was totally booked at that point. But I had an awesome time last time we hung out so I'm sure today will be fun too...

That's all for now - let you know how the weekend went soon!

yay 4 кошки

I was informed today by my grammar teacher that today was not only the first day of spring, but also the international holiday for cats (hence the title). Russian language isn't the only thing that you learn at Herzen...

So I've been super tired all day because we only really had a one-day-weekend, since we had class on Saturday. On Saturday night we went out to celebrate Cheryl's 23rd birthday at an American restaurant/bar, The Other Side. It was supposed to be a surprise, but I'm pretty sure she had a good idea that we were planning something. I bought her a birthday crown from Dom Knigi and some birthday candles - my host mother was making me feel really guilty because I wasn't planning on getting her an official gift. I told her that we'd probably just pay for her dinner and drinks and such, and she kept saying that that stuff should go without saying and, if it's her birthday, you have to give her something. But she seemed satisfied when I told her later that I got her the crown and candles.

On Sunday, I went to mass and then bought an umbrella, because it was raining! It's finally starting to warm up a little bit, which is exciting, but with that comes this mondo-city-meltdown. One of my friends compared walking around in Piter to walking around in a mud-flavored slurpee. Yum yum. Definitely need to buy some boots ASAP - this morning my host mother picked up my knee-high boots (which were not made for a Russian winter) with all their holes and said, "You need to throw these away." Lol. I said, "Yes, I agree."

Brittany and I also bought tickets to go see Alice in Wonderland on Thursday - it actually comes out in Russia a day before it comes out in America! I'm stoked. Then I went home and played some games with the girls, talked to my parents, and finished up my homework. Then I went out to meet my tutor at 9 pm at the bar where she DJs, Dacha. That totally made my day. We just sat and talked for an hour about random topics (my banya experience, American TV shows, music, torrenting, age differences, etc.) until her shift started. Then she introduced me to some of her friends that were my age that come to Dacha a lot. One of her friends, Anya, took me under her wing and talked with me for the entire night, introducing me to all of their friends and such. She was also really cool - she's studying German and English (kind of like a Russian version of what I'm doing) at a small university right now and she's half Armenian. She told me that she would invite me to come play poker with her group of friends if I was interested, so I was excited. Then when it got to be 12 and I had to catch the metro, Sasha (my tutor) had her two of her guy friends escort me to the metro, even though it was super close. I didn't get back home till around 12:30 and I was pretty sleepy in the morning, but it was absolutely worth it!

Today was a really long day because we had to make up a class that our teacher had cancelled last week today after the normal class day. Then right after that I found out that I had to meet with the people at the film company where I'm going to work for my internship! They are organizing a film festival for the summer and they put on old American movies with Russian subtitles at in Indie theater every week. It looks like we're (my friend Max is also interning with me) probably going to be working on Mondays and Fridays, editing English translations of things and such for now, but if we get to stay for the summer we'll get to do a lot of really cool stuff since that's when the festival is held :-).

Now I'm SUPER tired, so I'm going to sign off for tonight - probably next time, I'll be writing about the Russian hockey game we are going to on Wednesday!