Live from Saint Petersburg....

My apologies for having been out of touch for the last couple of days...internet service is difficult to come by in this part of the world, and it doesn't come cheap. I have a ton of awesome pictures, but unfortunately, my laptop is having some difficulties, and I can't upload them yet. I've only got 200 rubles-worth of WiFi at the moment, so I'll try to be as brief as I can.

Okay, so let me summarize the last few days: I and my fellow American students checked out of our hotel yesterday morning, and I met my host family last evening. And by "host family", I mean "host mother", since Marina Vasilevna Barbarovich lives all by herself. She is a very pleasant Russian babushka, friendly and helpful and a very good cook. She also speaks absolutely no English whatsoever. That's right. NYET ANGLISKIY.

As you can imagine, this has led to a number of awkward silences as I struggle with my broken Russian, desperately flipping through my insufficient Russian-English dictionary to try and express myself with some small modicum of clarity. Marina Vasilevna has been very, VERY patient with me, but I will freely admit that it would be nice if I had a host family with at least one broken-English speaker to help me get my words translated.

Also, 90% of the students on the program live on Vasilevksy Island. I am not part of that 90%. I live on Moskovsky Prospekt, which is a nice street, filled with Stalinist architecture and the occasional monument to Comrade Lenin. I'd much rather live within a few blocks of fellow English speakers, to be perfectly honest, but such is the hand that I've been dealt, and I suppose I'll just have to roll with the punches. So to speak.

Anyway, my less-than-ideal housing situation aside, Saint Petersburg is actually quite pleasant. The buildings are all gorgeous. Over the last couple days, I've seen most of the major cathedrals, including St. Isaac's and Kazansky Sobor, and I've heard the guns of Peter & Paul Fortress (Petropavlovskaya Krepost) announcing midday with their ground-shaking blast. Our bus-driver, Nikolai Luschkov, looks a bit like an ex- Chechen warlord, but he is friendly and good at his job. Our program directors, Dr. Longan and Ms. Shuliakovskaya, are also very nice and helpful...Ms. Shuliakovskaya actually bears an uncanny resemblence to my Russian professor, Lina Bernstein, if the latter were wearing a peroxide-blonde wig.

The other students on the program are all really cool kids, from completely different parts of the country. Over the last three days, I've made friends with Ohioans, Californians, Oregonians, New Yorkers, New Englanders, and whatever it is that you call people from Illinois. (Illinoisians? Illinoisites? Illini?) They come from an equally diverse range of colleges, from Lewis and Clark College to Harvard University. We're a fairly quirky bunch...one minute, we're talking about the Hermitage, and the next minute, we're debating what the best games for Nintendo 64 were. All in all, a pretty awesome group.

I've even made my first Russian friend, Nastia (a diminutive of Anastasia), who is a Psychology student at St. Petersburg State. She was a volunteer tour guide with us on the first two days, and is extremely knowledgeable about Russian and American customs. She and I spent a lot of time talking the other day, and she was kind enough to allow me to address her with the informal "Tiy" as opposed to the formal "Viy", which I view as a huge compliment.

It looks like my WiFi time is about to expire, so I'll sign off now....hopefully this has been a sufficient account of my activities for the last few days, da?

Do svidanya, my friends.