Nothing like Anastasia....

Блог 9

                Well my days are getting longer, classes are coming to an end, and I can see my homecoming on the horizon- but none of that will happen before the rather interesting and busy month of May. As in America, the end of my semester is bringing papers, finals, and absolute senioritis. This last week was ok. I was pretty sick at the beginning (yes, I know- I'm always sick here…) but had a fun, if calm weekend.

                Thursday was spent at Kontakt with friends, and I managed to forget my keys at home. I got through the building door by being a creeper and sneaking in behind some woman, but then at the apartment I knocked, rang the bell, yelled, and talked to the dog through the door who was whining like crazy. I could hear my host mom yelling at him to be quiet on the other side and I yelled back but she never heard me. I 

My phonetics teacher, Neda, and Emma.

called her but she was on her phone, until finally I sent her a text and she opened up, but not without a lot of laughter and judgement... She was my saviour, but she punished me by feeding me brown kasha for dinner. I think I told you about kasha already- the oatmeal like gooey cement with a stick of butter melting on top that Russians eat for breakfast or when they are sick. Well brown kasha is a lot like brown rice, but not like brown rice at all. It tastes a lot like licking dirt, but with a worse after taste. She gave it to me once with warm milk, as kind of a hot cereal-  it tasted a lot like rice pudding but again, with that extra dirt flavor. Very unfortunate evening. Friday though- Friday was something completely different.

Lovely Russian friend, Pasha.

                Every semester our host program has a dance. Rather like high school (this program just causes college students to regress into high schoolers) we had a spring ball, which was basically prom without dates and with costumes. This year was a masquerade which kind of worked, but everyone took their masks off after about 20 minutes. We rented very ridiculous costumes from a rather grouchy Russian woman who kept exclaiming over our group of girls and how "big" we were and how she didn't have costumes that fit us. It was a magical experience overall. I ended up in a wedding cake and Alexa wound up in a Jane Austen inspired lacey wedding cake, both complete with hoops and bows. There were three brides at the ball, none of us terribly happy about the fact. They put the two pasty white redheads in all white… rough.

The not-so-blushing brides... 

                Anywho- the ball was very exciting. There was champagne, waltzing (terribly, on my part), a fortune teller, a murder, a duel in the rain… A very large game of musical chairs and, of course, the ball king and queen. Our king and queen were the ever adorable married couple in our program, Kristi and Jared, who also hosted the evening. Our choir sang some Russian songs, there was an attempt at a polka, and over all it was a pleasant evening.  Not really sure who won the duel but it was over a murder, or some such thing.

                That's about all my week was. Alexa and I tried a new restaurant on The Island last night. An Azerbaijani place whose main ingredient- unfortunately enough for me- was cilantro. Not my favorite thing on earth. May though, is full of wonderful holidays. This week will only be two days long and then a five day weekend spent mostly in the town of Pskov with the program. Then the week after that is Victory day and a 

My group, Group 4!!!

four day weekend. We are trying to get out of town for that, but so far we've been a bit lazy and haven't made any plans. I have a paper to write for my political culture course and a poem to rehearse for my phonetics final. I'm thinking of doing a poem by Anna Akhmatova called The Last Toast. It's always been one of my favorites, and I think I have a better chance of saying it all correctly if I am very familiar with it. Sorry for such a short post, but it was a very normal week, as Russia goes. The sun didn't go down until 10:30 tonight, so my schedule is a bit wonky. I'm not sure if there will be a post next weekend but I will try very hard to get one written.

                Thanks again for reading and don't forget to follow my blog!!!!

Винни Пух и День Забот

Блог 8

          Hey folks! Been a while. The last two weeks were relatively uneventful, especially in comparison to the wonderfullness that was Turkey. I was really really sick when I got back from Turkey and am still recovering from some weird stomach  virus or whatever it was. Still not feeling 100% but hopefully it'll go away soon. Alexa thinks I'm dying but I'm pretty sure I'd know. In any case, I'll go to the doctor when I get home.

          Despite being determined to be more productive culturally this weekend, we kind of failed at doing so. We have a lot of plans to go to really interesting, educational, historical places, but the only interesting place I managed to get to was Khram Spasa na Krovi (Church of Our Savior on the Spilled Blood). We went on a nice walk around some parks and walked around the church. The church was built in the late 1800s and is the most "Russian" looking building in all of the very western city that is Petersburg. The church was built on the site where Alexander II was assassinated and was built in his memory- thus the title, Spilled Blood.

Khram Spasa na Krovi

          Spring has finally come to St. Petersburg, and with it the nighttime sun. Every day the sun goes down later and rises earlier, and the bridges have started to go up at night. That would have been great to know Friday night when we got stuck on the other side of the city, but I'll get to that later. The Neva river finally melted so the ships come through every night, so the bridges open late at night for a short-but-oh-so-inconvenient time every evening. With the sun staying out longer and longer, I can feel the White Nights coming. Those nights where the sun never goes down and people start getting weird because no one can ever sleep. There is no more snow on the ground (yay!) but somehow there is wet everywhere. The ground is wet all the time, and there are huge puddles everywhere. For some weird reason all of the parks are closed, and we think it's so that they can dry out.

Very pretty Khram.

          I'm going to take a second and complain about our program. Most of what they do is great, and they organize a lot of silly outings that are good fun and interesting, with tours and such. But the classes we have are- frankly- pointless. I genuinely feel like my language skills have gotten far worse- and I know everyone's response to this is always, of course because now you know what you don't know- but no. I used to be a great writer with exceptional grammar skills, but now I can barely spell basic words. My understanding has gone through the roof, but my grammar has gone through the floor. I can speak, but I know that I sound like a six-year-old when I talk- although some of those damn six-year-olds can talk me out of the park… Le crap….

          Anywho- last Friday night we found ourselves- once again- at Kontakt, because, apparently in Russia, all roads lead to Kontakt. For once, the night didn't end there. Sitting next to us at the bar were two lovely girls, one from Germany, one Russian. They study music in Petersburg, are around our age, and are absolutely wonderful. Lidia and Dasha (guess who is from where) decided to take us with them to a jazz club with live jazz. The club was called The Hat and was really cool, with middle aged male bartenders wearing bow ties, and cool music and a sweet trumpet player and our insane friend Lidia making friends with everyone. It was a great time, so this past Friday we wanted to go out with them again. This time we went to some back alley electronic club with lots of colorful lights and loud music and I felt too old and no one was dancing. It could have been fun, if we hadn't gotten stuck there.

Honestly, I didn't take any pictures this
week, so here's a big bell from the Kremlin
in Moscow.....

          As I've told you, I live on Vasilievsky Ostrov, which is an Island across the Neva from the main part of Petersburg. It's really gorgeous on what I call, "The Island" and we have all we could ask for, but as I said before, unbeknownst to us, the bridges started opening this week. That means that we were stuck in that club until the bridge to The Island opened at around 3:00 a.m. Really, that's not too bad but we are all old and lame and desperate to get home so I sat there guarding Bianca who had fallen asleep on the table while Alexa danced with Dasha  and Lidia (so many names!) went off to who-knows-where, until we could run out of the alley before we got mugged and wait for our taxi. This all sounds more dramatic and dangerous than it was, because this "alley" was within two blocks of one of the busiest parts of the city, but it seemed bad at the time.
          On Wednesday night, my host mom taught me how to make sirniki which was both entertaining and delicious. They are these small, round, fried cake things that have a similar texture to cheesecake and are sweet and completely delicious. They are make out of curd, flour, sugar, etc. and are amazingly delicious with smetana (Russian sour cream which isn't gross like American sour cream) and sugar on top. She usually makes them for me for breakfast on weekends and when I told her how much I like them she helped me make them, and made them for me again this morning. What a sweetheart.

As I said, no pictures this week, so here's an Olympic
Mascot in Moscow for the 2014 Sochi games!

          Finally, Saturday, I went bowling with some of the other people in the program, which is always fun, and I'm pretty sure the tattooed oh-so-typically-Russian man at the table next to us offered to buy us drinks, but I declined because what he said made zero sense to me. It had to have been a drink offer, but it was phrased oddly. This week we also went and rented costumes for our Spring Ball with CIEE which is a masquerade this year, so expect stories and news on that next week. I will be appearing in my role as Snow-Beast, Wedding Cake, and other big puffy white dress related jokes. Still need to buy a mask, so maybe that will make up for it. For now, I am going to edit my resume, and apply to tens of jobs online in the hopes that someone will take pity on a soon-to-be-graduate with a year to kill before graduate school. Send me all your professional vibes!!!!

Here is Russian Winnie the Pooh to get you through the week. His name is Vinney Puh… I hope you find the translation as hilarious as I do:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73uIn56G1YE

Istanbul (aka- where you'll find me when I need to hide from the government...)

Блог 7

St. Basils!!!!!!

          Hey guys! Sorry for the very very very late post, but I will tell you, it was not for nothing! While I've been away, I have been to multiple interesting places and cannot wait for you to laugh at my awkwardness. Quickly, I'll catch you up on the week before I went on vacation. I swear everything gets better after this first story. Two Wednesdays ago was, simply put, a terrible day. I was groped on the metro, tripped over the sole of my shoe which had decided to secede from the rest of the boot, ended up getting a packed lunch of onion and fish salad, had the door to the mashrootka (unofficial bus- more like a van) shut literally on my face, and about ten other small things that added up in to one big mess of a day. That was super lame. Then, that Saturday, we went on another excursion that I couldn't wait for. I have been able to see it of my balcony for two months, and have been dying to go. Petropavlovsky Krepast or Peter and Paul Fortress. 

The Cathedral in Moscow in which
Pussy Riot protested.

Amazing, stunning, and very interesting are words I would use to describe the inside of the sobor (church) that houses the remains of the majority of the Russian rulers and their families since Peter the Great. Unfortunately the outside was completely covered in scaffolding, but it was very impressive.

          Last Friday, the last of March, all of the little CIEE students got down to the train station, Moscovsky Vokzal and got on the midnight train to Moscow. There we took a tour of the Kremlin, spent time on the Red Square, walked along amazingly different and more Russian streets, saw some 

Inside the Kremlin.

very beautiful metro stops and overall had a very good time. I'm not going to spend time talking about Moscow though (sorry) because it has been overshadowed by last week. From Moscow,  a group of us made our merry way to Istanbul (which shall, from here on, be known as Paradise, or my new home). In Moscow and St. Petersburg it was snowy, cold, wet and dreary. In Istanbul, everyone smiles at you, even if they are trying to sell you something it's such a welcome change, the sky is gorgeous, the weather is warm, there are beaches and bodies of water that aren't frozen… Palm trees. We saw palm trees! 

          We saw all the big sights, went inside the Hagia Sofya, Blue Mosque, the Archaeological museum, textile museum, Galata tower (you can see the whole of the city from the top of the tower), the Süleymaniye Mosque, the aqueduct, Grand Bazaar, Spice Bazaar, Topkapi Palace, Constantine's Column, Hippodrome, Book Bazaar, Taksim (a popular night area that we visited during the day- oops), and so, so much more. More mosques than I can possibly name. I am obviously not going to cover all of this because it would take forever- but here are the highlights.

The Hagia Sophya

          We got in on Sunday night, the five of us, four girls and one guy. We figured this could lead to a lot of jokes, and we were not disappointed. The first night was an 

Loosin' my cool meeting
Eddie FREAKIN' Izzard!

adventure just getting to our hostel when our shuttle wasn't there and we ended up needing a taxi, which then couldn't find our hostel. Finally, after some walking, we found it and went on a tour of the neighborhood. We were in the rather important part of Sultanhamet where the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophya face each other, the Hippodrome and Basilica Cistern off to one side, and an overall loveliness everywhere. So the first night we saw the Hagia Sophya and Blue Mosque all light up and went back to the hostel for the night. The next day, we all went hard. It was a lot of walking and getting lost but we found a lot of cool landmarks, a gorgeous park, and the Spice Market. Best part of my day, meeting Eddie Izzard in the Spice Market in Istanbul… WHAT?!?

Blue Mosque

          The vendors in the Spice Market do their very best to be persuasive enough to get you into their store and to purchase something. They go from flattery to pretending to be offended that we were ignoring them to jokes. As I said, jokes about our group were pretty easy to make, apparently. Our personal favorites were, "Are you the Spice Girls?", "What a large harem for one man!", and the winner, "Charlie- you are only supposed to have three angels!" Those were the most common. Some of the more clever salesmen tried to add on to older material, like, "Charlie- why do you have four angels? What is this, global warming?!" Even on the street where our very lovely hostel was, the 

Inside the Blue Mosque

restaurants had men on the street doing anything in the power except throw us into their joint. Our hostel had a café out front and very friendly staff who quite liked Rhiannon, one of the girls I was with, but trying to get to our café was always a challenge. The first night we ran into a rug dealer down the street who invited us to his shop and offered us wine and champagne, then told me I could have anything in his store for free. He then told Alec, as we were leaving, that if he touched me it would be like touching him. Super creepy, now that I think about that, but it sounded a lot less bad at the time- but we avoided him every day after that.

Inside the Hagia Sofya. Sorry about the bad light...

          We went to the Grand Bazaar, and before we even made it into the bazaar, we were met by a terribly friendly rug dealer who took us to his shop, gave us apple tea, kept repeating the same, rather rude and obscene phrases in English. We finally got out of there, but not before he unloaded three small rugs on us in an embarrassing display of American ignorance. Some venders would sell at us in English, occasional Russian, once German and Emma got Spanish at one point. I think they are very good at telling what European countries people are from, but Americans are difficult because we are such a mish-mash of different ancestry.

Princes' Islands on a random street with a carriage.

          Our best day, in my opinion, was spent on the largest of the Princes' Islands,  Büyükada after a ferry ride, and went on a calm walk through a farmers market, brought bread and cheese, bought fruit and found an amazing pier that was definitely not somewhere we were supposed to be, and had a picnic. We were enjoying soaking in the sun, when we suddenly noticed that we were being circled by gulls. Two landed rather

On the Asia Side enjoying
the sun.

 near to us but a rather intrepid little cat defended us against them, and joined our picnic in return for a bit of our feta and affection. So kind of him. We named him Kabatash and he was a sweetheart, and then took a cat nap in the sun. A few days later, we went to the Asia side and found an area called Moda (suggested to us by Emma's very handsome Turkish friend, Sayid) and had a really unique breakfast with some good sauces, a real honeycomb, and cheeses. Then found some world famous (or just Istanbul famous?) ice-cream and enjoyed being in Asia.

Whirling Dervish!

          Obviously I can't tell you as many stories as I would like to because this is already becoming too long and you all have lives, jobs, or T.V. shows to get back to. Overall the entire trip was awesome, amazing, beautiful, gorgeous, and I am not happy about being back in dreary Siberia. I'll save you having to listen to the arduous tale of my plane rides home, but when I did get home I spent two and a half days in bed dying of some Turkish virus, or food poison, or something…. I'm still not great but I think after some rest this weekend, I'll be ok. Realistically, I'm glad to be back in Russia, but it was cruel for them to let me go to somewhere so shiny and friendly, where people smile at you on the street and you don't fall on your face all the time because of the ice everywhere. It's staying light out for a lot longer now, though. The sun isn't down until after 9:00 and it's up much earlier, so we're well on our way to the "white nights" over here. That's it for today- I hope it made up for two weeks of being gone. Sorry about that! I'll be back next Sunday, April 20th and should be back on blog schedule after that. Thanks for reading, ya'll!!!

The great group of folk I traveled with!
(Right to left: Alec, yours truly, Hannah, Rhiannon, Emma)