Москва!!!!!

I took the overnight train from St. Pete to Moscow on Wednesday night, and have now been in Moscow for 4 days. It is very cold here, around -20 degrees. I am wearing my long underwear right now. My first days here, I wandered around the city a bit, and went to a few museums. The Pushkin museum and gallery are amazing!! Picasso, Matisse, Degas, lots of neat stuff!! It felt good to be so independant and to figure things out on my own, and actually have to communicate with people in Russian, without anyone there to help me. I even managed to get lost (but i guess that doesn't take much effort in such a big city) and got directions from a babushka on the street. The metro in St. Pete has 5 lines. The metro in moscow has something like 12 lines. In one metro station I've been to, I was lost for 30 minutes! There was a restaurant in the metro!!! I thought I was at an airport. There is a city under Moscow, I call in Metrocity.

Yesterday I went to Arbot and wandered around, but it was very cold. After my hour commute there, I walked around for an hour, and was to cold to continue, so I went back to the apartment. The city is beautiful, and huge, but on my own, it's a little intimidating, and a little boring without someone to share it with. Luckily, today, I was greeted by my 2nd babushka. She picked me up this morning and we decided to go to the Kremlin. We spent the whole day exploring it! The snow was falling, and it was beautiful. The Kremlin is quite huge, and we did a lot there. First, she insisted on buying me souveniers to prove I was in Moscow, then we went to Church square, where there are 5 churches, dating back to the 13th century. They are beautiful!! We had a tour of the Palace Jewels, and of the Armoury, and wandered through Alexander park. I love babushkas, while we were on tours, she always pushed me to the front of the crowd and told everyone to be nice to me because I'm short. Wonderful. On our way home, we stopped and got cabbage and meat pies from a vendor outside the metro, only her pie was missing the cabbage, it was empty!! Poor babushka.

I wonder what kind of adventures I will have this week :) Merry Christmas!!!!

Semester is almost over.

My first semester in Russia is almost over. One more day of finals and then everyone leaves. Somehow I have survived 4 months living in Russia!! I think that is pretty sweet. So much has happened this semester, so many changes, in me and in Russia.

We have gone through three seasons already. When I got here, the city was beautiful and warm. The sun lit up all the beautiful old buildings and everything was lovely. Then came the rain, which was beautiful in it's own way. There is something beautiful about watching hundreds of people walk around with their little umbrellas. After the rain came the cold and no sun. I have not seen the sun in a very long time. The days are about four hours long, and not very light because of all the clouds. This is kind of depressing, but it gives me a better appreciation for the sun. Today it is snowing and beautiful. At night sometimes the sky clears up a little and i can see stars.

I have learned to eat many foods I would never have tried before. I am a big fan of Russian vegetable dishes! My babushka makes the best shi soup ever! and cabbage dishes.
I have also now made 2 pumkin pies. Not many Russians have ever tried pumpkin pie, so my tutor and I hosted a thanksgiving dinner party this week and made some traditional foods for her friends. That was very fun!!

I am becoming a lot more confident in my Russian speaking skills, though sometimes it is hard to talk in front of people becauseI know I am making errors, but for the most part, they are very patient. I have adventured to cafes, the post office, stores, and other places where I need to use my Russian, oh and school. School takes up a lot of time, and I am only allowed to speak Russian there.

This is my life. It is interesting to think that this is my life. I live in Russia. I am surrounded by people who speak a different language. I love it!!

Soon, I will be going to Moscow and having an adventure there on my own. This will be a challenge, but I hope a fun challenge!

Gogol Bordello!!!

Last night I saw Gogol Bordello in concert!!!! Russian concerts are very much like American ones. Crazy people, good music. I TOUCHED the VIOLIN PLayer. So before the concert started, my friends and I made our way to the front of the crowd and there was happening a fight! These two seemingly drunk men started hitting eachother and then I thought it was over, but the big one hit the little one and the little one spun around and his face was covered in blood. He splattered blood all over my friend's face and arms. It was really gross!!! But after that, other than the moshing going on around us, the concert was so wonderful! Eugene and the electric violin player changed my life!! If you don't know who Gogol Bordello is, check out their song Start Wearing Purple. So great!!!

Баня!!! and Thanksgiving!!!

The banya is an important part of Russian culture, and this week, I got to take part. Every week, we(the students in my program) go on an excursion. Often we go to museums, or concerts. This week, we went to the banya. The banya is kind of like a sauna. We were divided into two rooms. One for the girls and one for the guys. In each room, there is a steam room where the temperature gets up to 190 degrees f, and a room with a very cold pool. In the steam room, you can sit around and talk, and after a few rounds of steaming and jumping into the fridged water, you hit one another with birch branches. The whole experience is very relaxing. It is supposed to be very healthy, but then again, i think everything in Russia is supposed to be healthy(according to Russians). Everything my host mom makes for us to eat is "ochen polezno!" (very healthy), and pretty much everything in russia is "ochen polezno". For a snack we eat curded cheese mixed with sour cream and a few tablespoons of sugar, and apparently it is very good for me... we'll see about that.

Thursday was Thanksgiving, and as you probably know, Russians do not celebrate this holiday. My American friends and I got together for a big feast that we all helped prepair. We were able to find/creatively create foods that resembled typical Thanksgiving dishes, and it was amazing! My job was the pumpkin pie. I went to the Vegetable market and found fresh pumpkins and all the seasonings i needed. The market is a really neat place because there are so many different people there selling their products and most of them are really friendly. Whenever I asked for a product, they wanted to learn all about me-where i study and why I study Russian. That is a very popular question that I still don't know how to answer- "why do you study Russian???" I just do...

The pumpkin pie turned out so well!! It might be the best I ever had. That may be because the sense of acomplishment having found all the ingredients, and maybe because it reminded me of family thanksgivings, but it was great! We also had an interesting version of green bean casarole, and some buttermilk biskuts, minus the buttermilk, stuffing, turkey, cranberries and cookies. A feast indeed.

So, I had something really interesting to share with you all, but my mind has gone blank as I am sitting in a cafe and the people across from me are hardcore making out, and i can here it!!! EEwwww!

Ok, well I have something to say I guess... This week my friend took me to a Cossack festival. I then gave a presentation to my class about Cossacks. They have a very interesting culture. I really enjoyed their dancing and acapella singing. They use really neat harmonies! Below is a clip of them dancing...dont mind the red banister in the way :)

Last week, my friend Losha took me with him to the Master Hitchhiker's Guild of St. Petersburg meeting. There I met tons of nice people who have hitchhiked around Russia and Europe. At their meetings, they discuss safe ways to hitchhike, how to do it properly, and talk about their adventures. All the people there were very friendly, and have offered to show me around St. Petersburg, and the surrounding areas. At the meeting I met a girl named Katya, and she invited me to a concert the next night. My friend and I went on an adventure to find the concert, which ended up being in a tiny library across the Neva. We had to cross the Neva on a very long bridge, that didn't seem the safest. The wind is very strong on the Neva, and whenever a tram drove accross the bridge it shook so hard i thought it was going to crumble into the river.

Last Friday I went to the opera Rusalka(the mermaid) by Dvorak. This might be the best opera I have been to. The cast was half ballarinas and half singers. It was beautiful to watch and to listen to! My friend and I bought cheap tickets, so we were in the back row, but luckily he still had his school bag with so I sat on his dictionary so I could see over the people in front of me. Our dictionaries are so useful! I used it to see the opera, and then durring the intermissions, we used the dictionary to translate the story line in our program.

Last night my group went to see the opera Traviat after I visited the doctor. Now I can say I have been to the hospital on three continents! what an achievment... The opera was nice. At intermission we bought overpriced, but delicious strawberries, and then enjoyed the second half of the opera. I think it is wonderful how much music and art there is in Petersburg.

12.10.09
Today was the first snow of the year!! And tomorrow I will buy winter shoes. Converses are not going to work here in the wet cold winter. The snow is beautiful, but wet and it doesn’t really stay snowlike for long before it turns to slush and finds all the holes in my old warn convs. The streets are wet and cold now, but looking out my window on the 5 ½ floor, the rooftops are all still white with the fresh snow. When we saw the snow falling out the window in class, all of us ran out into the court yard and played in our first Russian snow. It was glorious.

Living on the 5 1/2 floor as I do, I get quite a work out every day hiking up and down the stairs, as the lift is under construction right now. My building has, possibly, the smallest lift in the entire world. It is difficult to fit two people in it, my host dad and I tried that out, and it was slightly awkward. I can never seem to get the giant metal lift door open, but luckily I live in a hotel building and we always have a doorman. I have become friends with a few of the doormen. My favorite is Mikial. He is probably in his late 40's and he is good to practice my Russian with. Sometimes I go sit in the entry way and try to have conversations with him because he seems bored most of the time.

Speaking Russian

Russian is a beautiful, but complex language. I’ve learned that at this point, as long as I have the vocab, people will at least understand and the grammar will come with time. Someday I hope to get the grammar down. Russian uses many words from other languages, but I’ve noticed insane amount of English words. I’m sure there are many from other languages as well, but seeing as English is my language, those are the words I notice. Anyways, So many Russian words are English words spoken with a Russian accent or modified slightly so that they can write it with the Cyrillic alphabet. If the word is a verb, they add ovats to the end of it. Sometimes when people are talking to me, I’ll understand everything except the word that is taken from English and they will have to repeat it over and over, and then out comes the dictionary and then I feel dumb because it is exactly the same in English as Russian. Maybe I just expect it to be something different? For instance, my tutor was telling me about her dog and I told her I didn’t understand what kind of dog it was, but it was a Dalmatian, and she was saying Dalmatian the whole time, but I didn’t catch on. This also works the other way, when I hear words that I think are cognates, but really mean something very different. This has caused me a bit of confusion in class.

The sites

The weather has been beautiful the last 2 weeks, with some scattered showers of course, but this weekend was just perfect! The sun shown all weekend and it was nice and warm, perfect for sight seeing. A friend took me around Petersburg and it was like we went back in time. First stop was an old camera store where I purchased a Soviet Camera and film to take some real Russian photos. Then we headed to the Church on Spilled Blood, Peter and Paul's Fortress, The eternal flame, and then a used book store and a Russian donut shop. On beautiful days in Russia, you can't walk through the city without seeing bridal parties taking pictures in front of ever Russian monumnet or famous lanscape. On Saturday I saw at least 14 brides running around in their beautiful dresses, one in a pink dress. They all take hot pink limozines to the different sites. Its pretty cute.
In the evening I went to a French film festival. When I got the tickets, I did not realize that it started at 12midnight. Three French films between midnight and 7am. My friend Cameron came with me and we helped eachother stay awake. The first two films were in French with Russian subtitles and I could understand them for the most part, but the third movie was very strange, and started at 4:30am and was dubbed over in Russian and I had no idea what was going on the whole time. It was in a really neat building though... Most of the buildings in the center are pretty neat though. They are beautiful! At night I am taked back by how beautifuly lit they all are. It will be interesting to see what this all looks like in the winter.

Rain

I never thought my dictionary and my umbrella would be my best friends. I take them both with me wherever I go and use them constantly. - Note to self- buy waterproof attractive shoes. I’m pretty sure the summer is over and the rainy season has begun. I enjoy the rain enough, but when my socks and shoes are soaked the whole way through, it creates a little discomfort. Russians don't seem to mind having wet feet in their high heals and flats.
Walking on crowded sidewalks with an umbrella is another art I have not yet mastered. It is much harder to pass people when you are playing bumper cars with their umbrellas. I am somewhat surprised to see so many bright and decorated umbrellas. Bright and colored everything for that matter. Coming to Russia, I was expecting everything to be dark and monotonous. People do wear black, but hot pink seems to be another favorite for Russian tops. The buildings are colorful and the streets are filled with colorful stands selling colorful flowers. Every so often while walking on Nevsky, there are people dressed in circus tent looking pants and handing out little papers. I’ve never accepted them, but they these people add a nice pop of color to the city.

Moving In

Sunday morning Katie Miller joined Jasmine and me as we ventured to the цветы stand at the metro near the hostel. After a few extremely awkward moments of trying to figure out what kind of flowers to get, and how many-knowing of course that Russians consider it bad luck to have even numbers of flowers, or anything really. I bought my host mom 3 gerber daisies. She has them now in a vase on the kitchn table. We were all so nervous to meet our families, but I feel like I had a little bit more reason to be worried because I have about the least Russian on the trip. I honestly feel like I have never before learned any Russian. Hopefully in the next few months things will get better and I will be able to understand what Tatyana and Dasha are saying to me.
The are very patient with me. Luckily, one of their favorite topics of conversation happens to be music. Tatyana plays piano and knows lots of famous musicians. Dasha plays the Didgeradoo, which is super cool. She is 22 years old as well and has lots of friends that have been over. I find them a bit intimidating. We live on the 6th floor of what I first believed to be a hotel. Above the door hangs a sign that says Hotel Anabel, but that is only part of the building.
We live up on the 6th flood, which is 112 stairs up, not that I counted... From my window I can see the Hermitage museum and some churches that are all lit up at night. I'd say I'm pretty lucky to live here with these nice people. Last night when I arrived home for the day, I finally met my host father, who had been missing the first few days. He had been in the forest picking mushrooms. The entire kitchen was filled with mushrooms. If you know me, you know that I do not eat mushrooms-ever! But I ate an entire bowl of Mushrooms and onions all cooked up together. I can't say it is my favorite food, but I ate it all. Today when I arrived home from school, Dasha and I had supper, and guess what it was---Mushroom soup! I am pretty sure we will be eating mushrooms for every meal for the next week at least! As long as I get to eat my blini for lunch I'll be ok. They are delicious creps filled with different things, my favorite is cabage and eggs with a little sour cream. ochen vkustvy! They are sold like fast food in many places near my school, but all made fresh! And inexpensive also.

Finally Here!

28.08.09
Traveling always takes a lot out of a person, but especially when the travel leads to the unknown. The feelings of excitement and nervousness have taken over at the moment. Time is something I have a hard time comprehending. We haven’t really slept since yesterday morning, which is now according to my watch 36 hours ago, but in reality is only 28. Still, this is long time to go without sleep in a stress filled situation. Two plane rides, a bus ride, and many long and heavy luggage hauls, we made it to the dormitory where we will spend the next day before we get our host families, which is much nicer than I anticipated. After an hour of waiting in line to ride the elevator with only ourselves and our luggage-because the elevator was too small to hold any more- we made our way to the little rooms with the tall ceilings. After a brief hour of shower and rest, we made our way to the streets of Peterburg to explore and exhaust ourselves in the new city we shall call home.

Getting ready

Hey everyone, I just set up this blog so that while I spend the year in Russia I can keep you updated. The packing has begun and the nerves have started up. Thanks to a great rummage sale I now am the owner of my very own American Tourist suitcase. Now all I need to do is figure out what to put in it. I leave in just under 3 weeks for the lovely St. Petersburg. This year is going to be exciting for sure, going to a new place with new people and a new language. I am looking forward to all the experiences and opportunities I will have in the next 10 months. Feel free to leave comments and questions in the blog! Do Svidaniya-until we meet again.