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.
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