ooops

So it has been a few months since I've blogged... Sorry about that. I have other entries, but I will add them later. This is the blog I did for my program.

Now that the weather has warmed up, and most of the snow has melted, or been shipped out of the city, St. Petersburg has once more evolved into almost a completely different city. I have found that with every season, the city has taken on a different personality. Now, as I stroll around the city, taking in its beauty, I see people everywhere; people of all kinds, of all ages, and of all social groups and from many different places. People dress in such a wide variety of cloths, there isn’t really a St. Petersburg style, anything goes. This city is very diverse, as many Russians have told me, “St. Petersburg is the New York of Europe”. Saint Petersburg is kind of a melting pot of people. We have a lot of people from different regions of Russia, as well as other countries. Every day, walking to school, or wandering around, I see hundreds faces. We don’t always think about these other people, they are just faces to us, but when we pay attention, we realize that each of those faces belongs to a person, a life, a story. Sometimes while I am on the escalator, descending into the underground world of the metro, I imagine the lives of the people passing me by on their way up to the surface. The older people captivate my thoughts as I daydream. They have lived through so much. I have a friend whose grandmother is in her 90’s. She lived during the time of the tsar, through the revolution, through the Soviet Union, and now into the 21st century and in the age of the Internet. She even knows how to send email.
Just by looking at these people, you would never know who they really are, and what their lives are like. I live in a building that is an apartment, but hotels are located on the lower levels. We have about five men who work at the door as the concierge for our building, and they are wonderful. The other day, I noticed an unfamiliar man sitting at the reception desk, so I introduced myself and started chatting with him. This man’s name is Vladimir and he is probably in his 60’s, with crazy black hair that only grows on the sides of his head. After a few minutes of chatting, he told me that he used to dance in the Mariinski Ballet. He had the lead in many productions such as The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, and he traveled around the world with the ballet. We chatted a while and he pulled out an album of photos from his days as a dancer. The photographs were amazing, and he was so happy to share them with me. Vladimir was also a film actor. He informed me that next Friday, if I tune into channel 1 at 21:30, I might watch a film in which he performed the lead role.
I do not understand how someone who used to be a dancer at the Mariinski and a movie actor ended up as my concierge, but this is just one more example of how people can surprise you here. I am glad that I got to know this man. He even invited me to go to the Ballet with him. Russians are interesting people full of surprises and secrets, and they will share their story, we just need to ask.

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.