In Russia, blog posts you...?

Блог 2 

         So it's been two weeks in Russia and boy has it been a long two weeks… My first weekend here I went to the Hermitage which was one of the more amazing places I have ever been in my life, and I could probably spend the rest of my four months in Russia there without ever noticing. The weather has been, in a word, wet. It's either snowing, about to snow, or just snowed. The sun came out for about one whole day (maybe five or six hours) last week which made me feel better, but other than that it stays a lovely 

My absolute favorite room in the Hermitage so far,
with a smaller replica of a mosaic from the Vatican
inlaid in the floor and chandeliers everywhere...

monotone gray. I have officially, as of right this minute, seen the sun a total of 3 hours since I got here. I get over it by pretending that I'm in a black and white movie... Only I'm not. It's just dark. It's genuinely not as cold as I feared or expected. There are definite moments when the cold is bitter and wet and cuts pretty deep, but no more cold than the mountains in Colorado, but currently there is a lot more snow here. I wish I could send some of what I'm getting home. 

Smolny Cathedral, the Political Science dept. of
St. Petersburg State University. Yes,
I googled this image but right now it's gray and
sad and snowy....

          Classes have been interesting. I was put into a lower group than I should have been and I was trying to move up one higher, but the groups are limited to ten people and I would have been eleven. I'm mildly annoyed but decide to make the best of it. So far I have been to three classes, grammar, conversation and phonetics. All are lovely and interesting and I am very interested in what we talk about, but I also don't have to work. My conversation teacher has decided that since I am on a higher comprehension level than the rest of the group, I will be her helper. My excitement is through the roof… My school is quite an awesome place. I study inside of Smolny Cathedral, which was a monastery and then a school for girls and now houses the political science department of St. Petersburg State University. It is beautiful and old and blue and church-like. This week was the first week of class with Russian students in the building at the same time, and they continue to look at the American students with that little smirk, like they think we are little kids or little ugly ducklings. I have two electives that are not language related, though they are both still taught in Russian, one of which is a political/cultural comparative between the United States and Russia, and the other is about the New Culture in St. Petersburg, or something. I'm not really sure. So far it has been a general history class. I already feel like three language classes is enough and exhausting, so two more should be a fun challenge.

          Over the weekend we went to Novgorod, which in Russian means New City. This is funny because Novgorod is the absolute opposite. I think they told me why it is called that, but my tour was in Russian and our lovely tour guide really enjoyed talking. And talking. And talking. Novgorod is colder than Petersburg, and the ground is wetter, and we tended to stand in one place for very long periods of time. That was less than fun. The sights were very interesting, though. A few churches, the old wooden houses and more old churches… The wooden houses were the most interesting and different because I had seen pictures of them but never been in one or seen one, so that was very cool. In this little village, they brought a bunch of wooden houses together from around Russia and rebuilt them in a kind of outdoor museum to make a mock village. There were also cute outdoor snow games and swings and more snow than you knew what to do with. Overall it was a good trip although my personal health suffered greatly from it.

Homeopathic garlic necklace....

          That brings me to my lovely host mom Larisa Sergeevna. Larisa Sergeevna is a wonderful woman. (Quick explanation. It is rude to call someone older or that you don't know by their first name alone, so you call them by first and middle name, their patronymic. It's the name of their father with a specific ending, so Larisa's father's name was Sergei). She is like an aunt with a great sense of humor, opinions about everything that she is willing to share, and the most mediocre cooking skills of anyone I know. She packs me breakfast every morning and I usually end up with some bread and cheese and ham that was microwaved to melt the cheese and left in tinfoil on the table overnight. Dinner is always an exciting event because I never know what I'll get, be it some form of fruit, pancake, pie, tortilla mixture (not my favorite) or hot dogs with sautéed potato and onion. We get along very well and she is very understanding about my lingual limitations. While I was away in Novgorod she came into my room and gave me new sheets (animal print) and 

My host mom's daughters dog, Fabian (I think that's his name)
who lives with us....

pillow cases and a big glass table, which was very thoughtful. I am pretty sick right now, and Russian are very well known for their homeopathic remedies- most of which involve garlic. So the other night I went to bed with a necklace of peeled garlic cloves that I was supposed to sleep in, because I had a sore throat. I had to do that two nights in a row. She is very sweet and made me warm milk with honey to help my throat, and has put up with my cough wonderfully. Today she helped me battle an ATM and helped me pay for my internet which was driving me crazy.

My lovely friends, Sasha and Anya at the
Mikhailovsky Theatre waiting for
the ballet to start.

          Friday night I went to the ballet which should have been super awesome and the first three acts definitely were wonderful, but everyone is pretty confused because we went to see Swan Lake and in the end (if you don't know the ending, I'm still going to ruin it for you because seriously, how do you not know the ending to Swan Lake? Didn't you see Black Swan?) they lived happily ever after and the bad guy died. I don't know about you, but when I go to see the Russian ballet, I expect tragedy and classic endings. I got neither. After the ballet we went to a bar called SPB which is the cheapest bar in Russia and there is one every few blocks, and I made a few Russian friends who worked at the bar and that was that.

          Other than all that, life is progressing as one would expect. Meeting new people. Finding the only Mexican restaurant in Petersburg and their very delicious margaritas, spending a lot of time walking in the absolute opposite direction I'm supposed to and falling on the ice. Frequently. Hopefully the sun will come out to play again soon and everyone's moods will lift. It's very hard to be super Denver-style friendly to surly "metro-faced" Russians. That's all for now. I am sure I will have far more to say when the time comes!

I leave you with the words of my political culture professor,

" Russians laugh at some things, and others cry…"