Bonus computer time!

Our afternoon lecture was cancelled, since the movie we were going to talk about could not be shown, due to technical difficulties. This means that I get to have some actual time on the computer! (Our table got served last at lunch, so that we were the last to get to the lab today. Looooong line.)

On with the more detailed informations!

I have a lovely small room full of photographs and books and beautiful carpets. One wall is almost entirely windows, which can be a blessing or a curse depending on what time of day it is; I don't know what I would do if I hadn't brought a blindfold. The white nights make it very hard to tell what time it is, and it's far too easy to underestimate how much time you've spent out and about, until your feet start hurtin or (I'm glad do say I haven't had this happen) all the bridges go up and you're stuck on the wrong island. Yes, I said all the bridges go up. The water traffic has to come through sometime, and so all the bridges that span any of the rivers are actually drawbridges. It's supposed to be really beautiful to watch them all, but I've been too tired to venture out at midnight. Plus, I live about forty minutes from the university on a good day, so I have to get up at seven thirty in the morning to make sure I get there on time.

Lyuba is very insistent upon breakfast- cereal and yogurt most of the time, but this morning she heard me rustling around (the apartment practically has a nightingale floor) and got up to make me an omelette (ahmelYET). It took me far too long to recognize the Russian pronunciation of omelette. Then, after asking me about my day and blessing my food, she went back to bed. I don't understand it! She practically chases me down the hall with snacks for school, and even if I say I've eaten dinner she gives me something to eat anyway.

Danil speaks very good English and is happy to help me, and I saw the other day that he has a computer in his room. I'm going to ask if I can use it, if it has internet. For dial up, you just use a phone or internet card. Then I'd be able to post a little more fully a little more often.

The food here is very good, though the goulashy thing that was today's meat course at lunch is not sitting extremely well in my stomach. As I've said, Lyuba makes sure I eat a real breakfast, and they have a whole dining room set aside for our group at lunch; when we get out of our second class, we go there, and the salad is already on the tables. No, not green salad- shredded apples and carrots, or peas and beets and pickles, or chopped tomatoes, radishes, zucchini and bell peppers. Always delicious. Then they bring out soup, which has so far been: vegetable; chicken noodle with potatoes; and today, some sort of lovely mushroom soup with sour cream. Then comes the meat course, which was beef meatballs in baked rounds of some sort of vegetal that no one could identify (very tasty), soemthing that I didn't eat and now forget what was, and today the delicious but slightly vocal goulash. Lunch is the big meal in Russia, and dinner is more like our lunch- a piece of pizza type affair.

It also turns out that we get an allowance for dinner, so that is good. 500 rubles a day, which is nothing to sneeze at.

I can get to school a variety of ways, but since none of them reaches the entire way, I've decided just to walk. It's great exercise, free, and there's no getting off on the wrong stop. There are marshrutki, which are fixed route, fixed fee cabs, but which only go part of the way; there is also the metro, which has a station near my house and one about a fifteen minute walk from teh university, which I may take from time to time. There are also the traditional gypsy cabs- wave your arm, someone will stop and take you where you're going for a minimal fee. They're apparently extremely safe, even according to most of our program directors, but they don't appeal to me. The metro and marshrutki both cost fifteen rubles, which is like forty cents. Or less.

In the morning, we have two classes. So far I've had grammar, phonetics, culture, and conversation. All of them are taught in Russian, which is actually nice because I keep surprising myself at how much I understand. I don't know how the placement test went, because they didn't assign ranks to the groups. My group, Emerald, has six students in it. There are three others- Sapphire, Ruby, and something else. I think Emerald is the lowest or second to lowest, but since other people were humming the same song from Phonetics today that we learned yesterday, I suspect there isn't as big a difference as I thought.

Then there's lunch, which I've already talked about, and then a lecture or two, and some days of the week a movie. Tonight we're going out to the theater- they bought sixteen tickets for The Vagina Monologues (in Russian) and sixteen for Verdy's Requiem. However, 26 people wanted to go to Verde and only four wanted to go to The Vagina Monologues.

Yesterday most of the students split into groups to go to restaurants around town, but I was too tired to do that. Instead, I was going to head home, but then Larissa said she didn't have keys to her apartment yet, so she couldn't go home and what she really wanted to do was go to Dom Knigi. Dom Knigi is the Powell's of St Petersburg, so how could I turn that down? We got fairly lost on the way, but within a small area, and we found it after a little walking. I got a detective novel, the absolute favorite genre of Russia, and a book of children's stories, and a collection of Roald Dahl stories in English to keep myself sane. Also got some school supplies. The Roald Dahl book cost easily twice as much as it would have in the states, but the russian books were extremely inexpensive. (I paid with my credit card, mom and dad, if you're wondering what that charge is.)

The weatherhere is rain, rain, rain. When people told me the weather was rainy and unpredictable, I thought, 'Hey! I'm from Oregon! What do they know about unpredictable, rainy weather?'

However, the rain here means what it says. The lack of good drainage anywhere makes puddle jumping an art- businessmen with black umbrellas tiptoe at a diagonal across the sidewalk, watching their feet. Yesterday I wasn't watching and stepped into a puddle as deep as my shoe. On our first day, it was merely overcast, and Ilookedwith some puzzlement and a little amusement at the drain in the courtyard, set three inches above the ground. However, it was doing brisk business yesterday.

A lot of things are definitely different here. Where else do you see 24 hour flower stands? Leafy greens are a fleeting dream. All bathrooms stink, but some of them have toilet seats and free toilet paper.

Anyway, I think that's all I have to say for the moment. I'll write again soon.