Beginning the routine..

1. September

I just ate hot pink soup. Delicious hot pink soup with beets and onions for dinner that my host mom made. It was colored that way from the beets, I would assume, and I’m not even lying when I say it was really good. I have definitely liked Russian cooking so far, and nothing has bothered my stomach either which is great. It seems to be a very simple and traditional style of cooking and eating, like a different kind of comfort food. Even what I had for lunch at school – like a big baked pirogie filled with cheese – was pretty good, and ridiculously cheap. Which is another thing, food prices can really be anywhere on the spectrum. I don’t think my host family has a lot of money, despite the really nice interior of the apartment, which is completely fine of course they have been nothing but nice and extremely helpful, its just an observation. Nathan (the academic director here) told us about one girl a couple of years ago who worked out that the amount of money she spent on bagels and coffee in the morning almost every day each month back in the United States was equal to her host mom’s salary for a month as a doctor in St. Petersburg. It is definitely a different world.

A world in which it also doesn’t matter how much you make, or if its raining or icy, you still have to wear stilettos if you’re a woman. Just an observation!

Classes started today as well, I think I’m in a good group and will become more comfortable with the base of language that I have and learn much more vocabulary and some more important grammar points. Everyone in my group seems really nice and both of the teachers that I had today were great and very accustomed to working with international students. I am also glad that I’m doing the Area Studies this semester where all my electives will be in English and then the Language Program in the spring with electives in Russian. I think it will be really helpful to build my comfort level with the language and then really intensify it in the spring, I’m excited to be spending the whole year here!

Today we found a great café where I had some ice cream and a couple of the guys got cake and coffee, and spent about 15 minutes trying to come up with the English for ‘konditerei’ in German, because the word in Russian is very similar. (The word is confectionary, in case you were wondering.) And then we walked around a little and went into a big mall to the internet café, where I posted from. It is such a big group of people that this group of guys I was hanging out with for the afternoon was totally different from the group of girls I spent most of yesterday afternoon with. A couple of the guys live very close to me and found an Irish pub not too far away, which is fun because we hadn’t found any bars really by us. So we’ll see what we get up to this weekend!

The rest of this week, though, we have a trip to the Hermitage and then classes. Saturday we have an excursion for most of the day. Busy already!

2. September

So no trip to the Hermitage today because we don’t have our student cards yet and apparently its really expensive to get in without them – its free for students. But we still walked around and took pictures because the weather was absolutely gorgeous. I didn’t have class until like 11:40 so Pasha and I had breakfast before he went to school (my roommate was already gone) and then I got ready and headed out to take the metro and walk to Smolny. I’ve decided when its really nice out I’d rather do that because the walk is gorgeous, through some pretty streets and a park, and even past the German and Austrian embassies which is of course very exciting for me.

I only had one class today, ‘ethnic studies’ with the academic director of the program here, Dr. Longan. He has a really broad base of knowledge and it looks like the class is going to be really interesting, even if he does seem to go off on quite a few tangents. Then we had choir class which was really cool! The teacher is adorable and I was very happy about how much I understood when she was explaining why choir was beneficial and giving us instructions. Today we learned ‘Kalinka’, which is a very traditional Russian folk song that is many centuries old. Choir is once a week and I am definitely looking forward to it.

After class some of us went to a peroshki place (they are like big dumplings, usually baked) because we hadn't had time between class, a meeting about ID and visa things, and choir. They were absolutely delicious!! Then we took the metro to Nievsky and took some pictures in the great weather before walking over to palace square to take pictures of the outside of the Hermitage even if we couldn't go in today. There were lots of tourists milling around and it was great just to stand and talk in the sunshine.

On the bus on the way home it was so crowded that we were passing our bus fare to other people to give to the controller. (Note about the public transport; it will get you where you want to go, but its not run particularly efficiently, there are controllers on every bus who you pay and the metro is ridden by using tokens or cards, its not the best system but I guess it works.) There was some confusion because Sarah and I paid together and the controller wasn't sure who had paid and we thought she kept asking us to pay but she was actually talking to a woman behind us who was trying to find her card in her purse. I must have looked like I didn't understand and I couldn't see the controller to see if it was me she was talking to but two girls next to me asked me 'sprichst du Deutsch?' (which means do you speak German?) and then they explained in German what the woman wanted because they could see the hand gestures she was making and who she was pointing at. So it all got worked out with no trouble and I got to speak German with a couple of German tourists! I am loving learning Russian and really feel like I've adjusted pretty well to living here but the place in the world where I feel most at home is still absolutely the German speaking world. I guess Russia has plenty of time to try and change all that though…

We had delicious eggs and onions and potatoes for dinner plus cucumber salad and spicy rice noodles and carrots that were absolutely wonderful. We got our host mom to try peanut butter and jelly that Rosa brought and the buckeyes that I brought because we discovered she had never had peanut butter before. So dinner time was really fun, and now we're headed over to see Nicole who lives with our host mom's mom.

Our host grandmother has an apartment overlooking the gulf of Finland, and our host mom made sure we were there in time to watch the sunset over the water. It is an absolutely beautiful view. Apparently the penthouse apartment in the building costs over 3 million dollars, it is a beautiful newer building with all kinds of security and beautiful balconies. Our host grandma grows all kinds of vegetables on her balcony which was very fun to see. We are getting more and more comfortable with our host mom and Pasha and its going to be really fun this weekend when we learn to make blini! Our host mom was also telling us about a really good Georgian restaurant that we will have to go to together which would also be really fun. Well now its late and I'm exhausted. Three classes tomorrow then I think I'll check out some guidebooks in dom knigi (house of books), then madre and padre are going to call before they head out on their big adventure! Love you all, I love seeing your comments and facebooks and tweets so please keep them coming, it helps the distance not seem nearly as far. I wish all of you could be with me here, but since you can't be just keep the comments coming ☺ All my love - beth anne