Sunshiney Day!

Made it to my homestay today! After a day of orientation things and getting to know each other better, we hopped onto a bus and drove around dropping people off at their homestays. I actually have a roommate - well I have my own room but we share a host mom and brother - whose name is Rosa. My host mom's name is Liliana, and my host brother's name is Pasha - he's 14 and studies at a high school for math and physics, he must be very smart. We live on Valsilievsky Island (its the big kind of triangle shaped one to the north-west of Nevsky Prospekt) pretty close to the bay, if there weren't apartment buildings between us and the water I would definitely be able to see it. They are both incredibly nice - I think Pasha knows more English than he lets on and Liliana actually knows some words too which she trys to use to make sure we understood something important. Though I'm sure some things have gotten lost in translation. She makes incredibly good tea and apparently her mom doesn't live too far away, Pasha went to get some jam from her which was absolutely delicious. She's asked us what we would like for breakfast and started making the borscht tonight that we will eat tomorrow night for dinner. There is a TV in almost every room, including a flat screen in the kitchen which is kind of crazy but the more Russian I hear the better.

Its kind of a funny apartment, the outside is clearly Soviet concrete that doesn't look incredibly nice but the inside is absolutely gorgeous, everything looks new and is spotless. I will hopefully take some pictures and post them very soon. I don't have much furniture in my room at all but I have a balcony which totally makes up for it. I also have beautiful textured wallpaper and hardwood floors. I definitely like it alot, we'll just have to see how the chemistry is, if it is strange having a roommate or if it just doesn't work for whatever reason the program has made it very clear that I shouldn't be worried about talking to them about changing, which makes me feel very relaxed about the whole situation. So we'll let it play out!

Saturday we have a bus tour and then a lunch with the group, Sunday we have a scavenger hunt, and Monday starts classes! Its crazy but it just keeps going and going!

Its Saturday afternoon now and I'm going to post this while we're stealing internet from somewhere. The bus tour was really interesting -- though I'm still not really sure I have an understanding of the city its rather crazy -- I am going to try and post pictures from the tour on Monday from the internet on campus, ok? English Mass is at 9:30 AM tomorrow at St. Catherine's Cathedral on Nevsky Prospekt, according to their website, I'll let you know how it goes, I'll be able to wander around a bit too tomorrow morning - before you freak out its the nicest and most touristy part of town so it will be fine and its a Sunday morning. Then our scavenger hunt starts at 12, so that should be crazy fun. I remember the scavenger hunt in DC that we all thought we'd hate but ended up showing us some great areas of the city that we wouldn't have found so hopefully this one will be similar. We'll see!

All my love to all of you, pictures hopefully on Monday and then we'll see how the internet goes!