Backlog of info!

Yes, now I have to type four days' worth of blog instead of just one.

Friday was... um... I can't remember what we did friday.

Oh yeah! We watched the movie Zerkalo, or Mirror. I think it's fairly famous even in the english speaking world. It's by the same guy who did the Russian original of Solaris, grandma. I liked it. I don't claim that I understood it, but I liked it.

Then I finished Harry Potter, the act of which- so far from the rest of my Harry Potter peoples- drove me to such heights of homesickness that I actually bothered to use my phone card and call home.

Then came Saturday. I went to the Museum of History of Saint Petersburg with a couple of friends, which was wonderful and kind of terrifying. It was very interesting to read all of the old propoganda posters and try to understand them. Sometimes there were linguistic difficulties, but sometimes I just didn't get the point- a poster saying "YOUTH ON TANKS!" with pictures of.... youths on tanks. Okaaay.

But then I got into the portions of the museum devoted to the Great Patriotic War and the Seige of Leningrad. The Seige, in case you haven't heard of it, was a period of 900 days- three years- in which almost no food or supplies made it into the city. Over half of the population starved to death, all the while still cranking out tanks and missiles. The front was so close to the city that the tanks didn't even have to be delivered- they were just driven from the city to the war.

The siege was timed, coincidentally, for a record-breakingly cold winter. The germans' plans for the city were to kill as many Russians as possible, so there'd be less to feed over the winters to come. There is black and white footage of gaunt people in huge coats, pulling sleds through the street and barely even looking at the bodies on the sidewalk. Sometimes someone puts a body on a sled. In the spring, everyone had to go around finding people who had died and been buried under the snow all winter. All the men were fighting, so it was women and children and old men running the city. My hostess told me that her mother had written in her diary that they had had wonderful, wonderful soup one day- made out of glue. All the parks were turned into cabbage fields, or dug with slit trenches to try and protect people from the constant bombing.

I was looking at a diorama of some of the internal fortifications of the city, and realized that the soldiers, sandbags, antiaircraft arms and smoke were all on a little embankment where I get off the marshrukta every day.


As I said, kind of terrifying.

Then I went to the bookstore, went home, and fell asleep.

The next day we all loaded up nice and early to go to The Czar's Woods, or however you can translate it. It's another summer palace complex, like Peterhof, and it's also where Pushkin studied.

I had a bit of an incident when the trolleybus I took decided that it didn't want to be a number 10; all its life it had dreamed of being a number 7. Before I realized that there was a mechanical midlife crisis underway, we were already on the wrong island. I got off and tried to catch a marshrutka, but there were none. No buses going my way, metro would have taken over forty minutes to get where I was going. I finally called one of our organizers who, it turned out, wasn't on duty and was actually asleep, but she told me where I could catch a marshrutka. as I turned to try and find it, the first cab I'd seen all day went by. I flagged him down, he screeched to a stop and nearly caused an accident, I confirmed a price with him, and off we went. It would have cost me about six bucks, but since I didn't have change I paid him eight. I got there on time though!

Then we went to the palace, which was gilded and mirrored and gorgeous and of which there are now many pictures in my Flickr account. http://www.flickr.com/photos/aubraspictures/ I would have taken even more, but I thought we were going to go through more rooms so I just took the coolest ones. Turns out that most of the interior is still being renovated after the German occupation.

You can also buy Baltic amber there, over which I drooled for some lenght of time- a half to a third of the price here- and there was a big souvenir flea market. I think that someone gypped me out of an extra hundred rubles there, but what the hey. I did some mental math and added my bill up to six hundred. I asked, and the girl looked at me like I'd grown a third ear and said seven hundred. I paid up, went home, redid the math, and thought, HEY!

Oh well.

It was so hot when we went into the palace that I almost bought a fan from one of the souvenir stalls. Then, as we were leaving, I went through some of the very nice art and jewelry and souvenir shops, and started falling in love with some shawls. They were all so expensive, but I really liked one that had no price. I asked, and it was fifty dollars- almost half as much as I'd expected. I bought it, kind of laughing at myself, but happy. I showed it off in the overwarm lobby while we waited for everyone else.

Then, when we got outside, the wind was blowing, the sky was over cast, and it was starting to rain. And who, may I ask, had just bought a nice warm shawl? Me! I was one of the few warm and dry people from then on. And fairly stylish, too.

Then we had a picnic! Lovely day for a picnic. We were all crammed under a little shelter in the middle of a clayey field, watching some Russian folks grilling food for us. Most people just went ahead and hit the ample supplies of beer, wine, and vodka to keep warm. I and the other two people who don't drink were very bored.

One guy from my group impressed everyone with the fact that he could down vodka like a russian... we had to herd him onto the bus when we left. Then the next day I found out that no one had actually made sure he got to his house safely. Jeez. Three people got off with them, and from what they said then they were going to stick with him! Aargh.

So, four wet, bored, and cold- though well fed- hours later, we went home. Then I tried to do homework.

Yesterday I documented my trip to school- as can be seen in the Flickr account- and then had classes and a lecture on grammar. Then we watched a movie called Brother, or Brat in russian. VERY cool hit-man movie. Fun fun fun. (Dad, you and me and mom are watching Zerkalo when I get back, and you and me are watching Brat.)

Then I went home and tried to do homework.

Today we have our second translation workshop, and then I'm going to go souvenir shopping in town, and then I'll try to do homework. I had better try pretty damned hard, because I've got an unreasonable amount due tomorrow, part of which is that final essay which is long and important and, as yet, only an idea floating around my head. Aargh.

Anywho, as I said, lots of photos are up now, and my cards are cleared for more photo taking. Thursday, I have plans with a friend to wander town and get some sightseeing and photo taking in before we leave.

Tomorrow I might try and get the photos into folders so you know what you're looking at, but that might have to wait until I get home. Suffice it to say that the dogs in the pictures are asleep, not dead, and that the kitty is named Nils and is a petting whore.

EDIT

Now all the photos are in sets that say what they're of. You can see all the sets down the right hand side of the main page on my album. http://www.flickr.com/photos/aubraspictures/ Have to run to lecture now! Talk to you tonight, mom and dad!