Adventures continue..

4th and 5th of September

One week of classes down, the rest of the semester to go! Classes have gone really well so far, I am definitely growing more comfortable with pronunciation and reading and the civilization, history, and ethnic studies courses are going to definitely add to my perspective on this incredible country. Add to all of that the experiences we are having around the city and it is going to be an absolutely incredible year here.

For instance, today Dan found a Mexican restaurant combined with a Japanese restaurant. So of course we had to give it a try, and the quesadillas were surprisingly good! So I can now say that I’ve been served Mexican food in St. Petersburg, Russia by a woman wearing a kimono. Tonight we went to an Irish bar, had an expensive but delicious Guinness and spent the night talking mostly to Kelly and Sarah. There were about 8 or 9 of us at the bar, and it was a great night for what I wanted, to just relax and talk over a beer and not worry about how we were going to get home since we went out early enough to take the metro back at midnight. Then Adam and I walked Sarah home, our island is pretty safe but at night we’ll definitely always try to drop people off as close to their door as possible. I can smell breakfast, which is good because we should probably leave in like 20-25 minutes to head to Pavlovsk, a palace and park south of the city. It doesn’t look like its going to be too nice of a day though, so we’ll see how much time we actually spend their taking pictures and such. I’d like to relax tonight, but there is talk of dance clubs so we’ll see how I’m feeling. Hope all is well out there beyond this cyberspace in the rest of the world!

Pavlovsk was a lot of fun, it was raining the whole time but the interior of the palace was gorgeous (sorry, no pictures because I would have had to pay extra and I figure I’ll get a great picture book of the area with professional pictures instead) and we had our same tour guide from the bus tour who speaks great English and seems to know absolutely everything about everything. Tom and I wandered around the grounds a little bit after lunch but the rain had us leaving a little earlier than we otherwise might have. No issues on the train ride back to town, now its time for a nap and some homework!