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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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.
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| 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:
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