Life, Remixed

Annoyances

2014-06-01T12:29:00.001-07:00

So last night, around 11 PM, I made the decision to pull an all-nighter. I figured if I would only get a maximum of 5 hours of sleep anyway (assuming I could fall asleep with the pounding bass rattling the doors – all-night dance parties are common in Russia), I might as well be tired enough to sleep on the plane and sleep well tonight, and I used the time to be (very) productive. I also made the decision to take a strategic 30-minute nap, and to wear my new ring to sleep, because it was pretty and it made me happy.

Dawn out the common room window

These all seemed like good decisions, but I was somehow mistaken about what time Professor Graybill was coming around to knock on our doors, and ended up getting up 15 minutes later than intended. Rushed, I had to switch up my clothes, repack my bag to protect breakables (I thought the wheels were on the wrong side), and double check the two rooms where I had stayed in order to make sure I wasn’t leaving anything behind.

I actually ended up being part of the first group of people down the stairs and on our way to the bus, 4 minutes down the road, but about 30 seconds into the walk I realized I didn’t have the ring on my pinkie. I’d curled up around it when I went to sleep, so I was pretty sure I just needed to go re-shake the sheets on my bed again and it would be there, which meant when the bus was in sight, I passed my heavy bags to Professor Helfant and started running.

The later students watched me running past them, confused, as I told them to keep walking and not to worry, and eventually I slowed to a quick walk in the parking lot near the hostel. Unfortunately, this just happened to be where a trio of very drunk young people were wandering. The man stumbled towards me, holding out a plastic cup with some kind of cocktail in it and asking me something in Russian, while the two girls laughed. I ignored him and started running again, which he took as an invitation to chase me, which hadn't even occurred to me. Even the girls didn't approve of that, and while he seemed to be nonthreatening, albeit persistent, I was glad when they made him give up.

Of course, when I got back up all the stairs and into the room, the ring wasn't there. I shook out the comforter, sheets, and mattress pad, pulled everything off the bed, searched under the bed, shook out the rugs, got help from Sasha (yes, the boy who asked me to go drinking with him then disappeared with James), tore through the common room, and looked in the other room just in case. Nada.

So I ran all the way back down the stairs and up the street past the hopeful taxi drivers to the bus, where I promptly fell asleep in my seat, despite my pounding heart. I woke up when we got to the airport with a massive headache and deep frustration. I really liked that ring, and it actually was sterling silver, so I could have worn it. I'm still hoping it's in my bags somewhere, and that it fell off when I was packing. I didn't even manage to get a decent picture of it, and I actually emailed a friend I made in the common room - Pavil - asking him to let me know if anyone found one (he says nothing so far).

The airport security started at the main door, where everyone had to go through a metal detector and put their bags through a scanner. I got patted down as well, just in case. Then we went upstairs to check in with Air Astana (even though we were headed for Almaty - confusing, I know) and, since I had actually checked in the night before, I got an aisle seat fairly close to the front for what was almost exactly a 4-hour flight.

We went through security again, this time with customs on the way out, where we had to present the tiny slips of paper that were our exit visas. The Russian woman scrutinized me carefully, but I got through the long line without a hitch, and exited into the terminal, free to find myself some hot cocoa.

This is where the second annoyance of the day began. I stopped at the second or third coffee shop I came to, because by that point I was within sight of the gate, and asked for what I was sure was a ridiculously overpriced sandwich from behind the glass and a hot cocoa (cacao, as opposed to the rich chocolate drink I got the other day when it rained at Lenin's Tomb).

As the cashier, leaning on her hand the entire time, rang me up, the man who had grabbed the sandwich asked if I was sure I didn't want coffee. I said "No, just cacao please."

Somehow, this didn't translate.

I got my receipt and stood to the side at a bar to wait for the hot cocoa. I watched them make the drink before mine, clean the machines, and stand, chatting with each other in Russian. A waitress asked if she could get anything, and I told her I was waiting for my drink, so she went away. The Russians behind the counter looked at me and talked to each other a couple of times, consulting receipts and making jokes as they watched me. They served the customer after me, and the customer after her. I smiled politely and waited, since I don't speak Russian and I always feel rude forcing people to communicate with me in English. Then the cashier turned to me after a long lull, as everyone stood around doing nothing, and said "Why are you here? You should leave. What do you want?"

I said "I want my hot chocolate." They consulted each other in Russian, and she told me dismissively "You didn't order this. You didn't pay for this."

By this time, I was out of patience and I snapped out that I had, actually, ordered it, and I would like it immediately; unaffected, she made a gesture at the man who had gotten me the sandwich, and loudly ordered me to "Pay, please." When the drink was done and I had it in hand she condescendingly added "Okay? Bye bye."

I drank my overpriced cocoa, ate my overpriced sandwich (which turned out to be unfortunately fishy salmon for such an early hour - I had thought it was bacon) and promptly fell asleep on the terminal floor. I woke up again when they called us to board, got on the plane (in the same row as Professor Graybill), and promptly fell asleep again. I pretty much slept through the rest of the flight, waking up when my neighbors prodded me so they could get out, and when the lunch service came by with - wouldn't you know it - another strongly fishy meal with some kind of weird spongey dessert. I completely ignored the customs card I was supposed to fill out, and had to do it after a terrifying touchdown in the mists of Almaty, on the shuttle from the plane to the terminal, with the assistance of translation from Professor Graybill.

Once again, I got through the immigration line without a hitch, although the length was painful. The official in the booth had me look into a camera the whole time she was messing with my documents, which was really strange, but she stamped my passport (!) and I was officially in the country.

Side Note: The stamps for Russia and Kazakhstan are very similar, and pretty boring. Kazakhstan has a bit more color, which is nice, and they're all right next to each other in a uniform row on one page.

Our bags were already out, so we gathered ourselves quickly - for a group of 20 - and walked outside, where a guide with a sign in hand ("Colgate University") was waiting for us with a shuttle driver. She hadn't counted on us having so many bags, and of such great size, so as we filled in and they pulled seats out of nowhere for us, they ran out of room, leaving the professors and the boys to catch cabs to our destination: an apartment complex/university housing/hostel in the nicest part of the city.

Our hostel is the top two floors, where the balconies are

It's very safe where we are, which is nice, because I felt comfortable going to and from dinner. I don't think I could say that about the rest of Almaty. The city has expanded out to where the airport is, although originally it didn't sprawl quite so far, and that area is suburban and seems nice. But between the airport and the inner city, things get a little sketchy: lots of corrugated tin roofs, weedy yards, and run-down buildings, mostly residential with small shopping places. The city grows up gradually from the suburbs, getting nicer and nicer, although I wouldn't say it's close to what would be considered the nicest part of, say, Seattle...it actually reminded me a bit of Costa Rica, in parts.

View from the hostel window

The elevator only fit two people (and their bags) at a time, so some people walked all the way up to the 9th floor. When I got there (by elevator), I was told to take my shoes off at the entrance - a tradition of cleanliness in Kazakhstan - and informed that Professor Helfant was not pleased with our lodgings, which involve two total rooms and three total bathrooms for our entire group. But there was no room at the hostel across the street, so that was that.

By the time I got upstairs to my room, all the bottom bunks were taken, so I have a crappy spot. Fortunately, there's no one in the bunk next to me, so I can put all my stuff up there. We talked for a while in the common room with our guide from the airport about the (packed) schedule our hosts at the university here set up for us, and where to go for ATMs, food, and groceries, before heading out.

I was with a pack of people I mostly liked, including both professors, and we eventually found a functional ATM that didn't require an international cell phone number for us to make withdrawals. I got $100 in tenge, which is a beautifully colorful and shiny currency a conversion factor of 183/dollar (too complicated!) and we headed for the restaurant with ethnic cuisine. It was awesome. I had a starter plate of two kinds of horse meat (one looked like sausage slices, the other like flank steak strips) and chicken, plus veal dumplings with onions, black and green tea with sugar that looked like rock candy, and a little of what everyone else had: tandoor bread, apple/pork/beet salad, carrot salad, eggplant, steamed vegetables, herbal lemonade...and everything was incredibly flavorful. I was suddenly starving, and it all tasted like the best meal I'd ever had. Then there were desserts: ginger in honey, which was very spicy; spiced jam; some sort of dry crumbly cake I can't remember the name of...and the waitress was so attentive she offered to pour tea for us and boxed up my extras.

After the meal, we made a quick pit stop in a produkte for juice (for me) and water, then walked back to the hostel. Aaron and I bonded over the cultural shock of Colgate and salmon pants, and I got over all the morning's annoyances...until I took a shower. I okayed it with everyone in the room, went as fast as I'm capable, and flew out the door when they banged on it, and immediately Amanda (who is always asking for things) said:

"Can we all agree to 8-minute showers from now on?" To which I promptly responded "Yeah, that's not going to happen." Becky misinterpreted it and thought I meant we should shoot for 5 instead, and I had to explain to the roomful of catty girls who see hair as a competition and shower time as an epic battle that I couldn't actually get my hair thoroughly wet in less than 3 minutes, never mind shampooing. Amanda kept trying to pick a fight with me and insisting it was possible, and I pretty much ignored her, even though I was tempted to just ask her to please leave me and my hair alone because she isn't mature enough to understand that not everything will go her way all the time. This will be an interesting few days...

Final Day

2014-05-31T18:07:00.000-07:00

It's so strange to realize that today was my last in Moscow. The professors will be knocking on our doors at 5:30 AM so we can be in the lobby, ready to leave by 6 AM and downstairs, loaded on the bus by 6:15. Our flight isn't even until 10:10 AM, but Moscow traffic at rush hour is so infamous, entire articles have been written on it (trust me, we had to read them for homework) and is actually 3-4 hours long in the morning and evening.

We headed to the nearby mini-mall today and I got myself juice at a stand and tea at the grocery store ("prod-youk-tee," pronunciation a pet peeve of Professor Helfant's). Then we sat in the small but nice park behind the produkte and discussed what we did during our free time yesterday. As it turns out, two other girls (Misha and Lorelai) and James, the senior, also went to banyas separately. I was a little bitter about how scared I was to go alone, although it probably would have been awkward to go with any of them. Some other people visited a forest on the outskirts of the city, the aerospace museum (which was apparently quite good), and the local bar scene. It was really hard to hear with all the traffic going by and not much happening in the way of projecting voices, so I missed out on a fair bit of the conversation, but I'm confident that I made good choices and had the best possible day.

The metro station is in the mini-mall, and the professors thought we had a 45-minute ride ahead of us, so on our way back I followed Professor Graybill into a bakery and nabbed an almond/marzipan pastry, which she paid for over my protests.

The ride ended up being much shorter than anticipated, even with a midpoint break to admire Soviet-era statues in a metro station. The British Professor (whose name, I've discovered, is John Round) informed us that pictures in the metro stations are now permissible, so I took loads, guards looking on suspiciously. Just to reiterate, it's silly how pretty the metro stations are. Tourist shops sell books of photos of the Moscow metro stations.

Our destination was a park far northeast of where we've been. If you ever look at a map of Moscow, beginning as far zoomed in on the Kremlin as possible and then slowly zooming outward, you can see that it was built in concentric circles of expansion, marked distinctly by roads. We've mostly stuck to the innermost 3 or 4 of those circles, moving clockwise from the 6 - 7 segment as the days went by Izmailovsky, today's park, was in the fifth circle of roughly 7. That fifth circle is wider than the entire first four circles combined, for some perspective.

Arrival at the park was a little underwhelming. It was a nice day - low seventies and sunny - for which we were all thankful, but the park looked to be a series of cheesy children's attractions. Even with a tram stopping directly in front of us, we could hear the terrible, awful, no good very bad music from an amusement park. It was the kind of stuff that drives good people to insanity.

For obvious reasons, I walked around the park gates and as far away as I possibly could, as quickly as I possibly could. The first diverging path led directly into the woods off to the right, and I followed it (and some less official paths) for most of the time we were there, in a big circle around the park that somehow managed to avoid most of the attractions. That was completely fine by me, because I had forgotten how much I love the woods, and how peaceful they are, and this little strip looked so much like Washington, albeit with a few too many deciduous trees intermixed with the pines.

I managed to mostly avoid people (exception: the odd couple, apparently meditating, in a clearing, with an old guy watching them) as well, which was nice because I played with my camera, taking macro shots and chasing birds.

Next on the docket: Vernisazh Market, across the street.

View backwards towards the tourist section

There is no adequate way to describe the madness of this market, nor is it possible to take an encompassing picture. There's an entry market of cheap knockoff shops, the main tourist drag, the lower antiques/handmade goods wing, the upper level of the same wing, and the (upper level) paintings/antiques wing, not to mention the carpet section. It was a combination of flea market, garage sale, high-end shops, food stalls, and pure junk with tourist souvenirs thrown in for kicks and kitschy facades to match. It was nutty. We were only supposed to be there for an hour, but just finding the end of it all took me most of that time, never mind bartering for things I wanted.

The food stalls, to the side of the tourist section

I ended up taking a surprising number of videos while I walked, although I didn't look at my screen while I was doing it so I have no idea whatsoever how they turned out. I have to think it captured the insanity, although I doubt I did a good job of actually showing the items for sale. A lot of people had their old clothes, household items, and completely random objects.

The edge of the tourist section and steps up to carpet section

Tourist shops were usually themed, and the fur sellers were the most aggressive. When they smell an English-speaker, they shout "madam" (that's a first). I was still looking for less expensive amber beads, as I have been since arriving in St. Petersburg, but even though everyone at the stands where I asked was accommodating, all they had were larger strings (bracelets/necklaces). They look nice, but amber doesn't weigh much, so they feel cheap and plasticky, and I really only wanted one or two, so it wasn't worth it. Instead, I bargained a jewelry seller down from 500 to 350 rubles ($10) for a pinky-sized ring with three colors of amber in little leaves that she promised was sterling silver. I've been wearing it since I got it, and I haven't had any problems yet, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I was also surprised at myself with my bartering capacity: we went back and forth, I started to walk away, and she called me back to accept my price, which was an awesome feeling.

The painting section; antiques are on the other side of the wall on the left

By the time I got the ring (from the lower antiques/handmade goods wing, which was a long strip on the left), I had already gone quickly through the upper sections, and I knew I was running out of time, so I hustled back towards the meeting point. On my way, I ran into Jeff, who was also hoping for more time, and together we agreed that we could manage navigating back to the hostel without a professor or group. So when everyone else left, we headed to the next door mall for the nearest ATM with Vica (who was also staying - we left Renee and Sarah in the market as well) to get more money for wasting, and went straight back to the market.

Matryoshka stall

Oddly enough, in the time it took us to get back, vendors had begun packing. But the picture above is one side of two in one stall of about a dozen selling just matryoshki, Russian stacking dolls. Those stalls had not closed by the time we left (around 6:20 PM, 2 hours later, 3 hours total in the market). There were stands of Faberge eggs, knitted items, linens, scarves...and records.

The man at this stand was probably in his thirties, and spoke very good English. I was hoping to find something interesting for my dad or uncle back home (beyond musty LPs with ripped labels and Beatles EPs with Russian translations) but when I asked about traditional Russian music, all he could offer me was folk songs, and when I asked about reggae, he just shook his head and said "During Soviet Russia? Not here." He was great, though, and he got into arguments about the music with a few other people while I watched.

I was hoping to get a few other things for myself, but many were too expensive even for haggling, while others (cute maxi skirts in the entry market) were made in Bangladesh, which seemed silly. I couldn't bring myself to spend money on the matryoshka dolls, which, frankly, look a little creepy and are painfully expensive when painted well. I did, however, accidentally spend 500 rubles ($15ish) on a bag of figs from a Middle Eastern (?) family with a little push cart. They only spoke Arabic (or what sounded like it from my highly limited experience), a few words of Russian, and a few words of English (although that was only the man), so we were completely doomed as far as negotiating went. When she held up 5 fingers, I handed her a note and was surprised to discover she intended two zeros after the 5, not one. But I got 1,000 grams of excellent figs to snack on during the flight from Russia to Kazakhstan tomorrow, and each one is enormous and tasty.

I was supposed to check my email for news from Professor Graybill about the team dinner at 6 PM, so I went to the front of the market where I was meeting Jeff and sat down with the iPad. Of course, the 3G, which was functioning beautifully when she had it, chose to cease and desist all activity, and I couldn't work it out. Instead, as I sat and fiddled and waited, I was repeatedly harassed, first by the shopkeeper across the way, then by men (mostly drunks) coming out of the market. This was especially noteworthy because it was the first time it was noticeable and understandable to me, a non-Russian speaker, as harassment, and eventually it got to the point where I felt uncomfortable sitting in my place and went back into the market to find Jeff and Vica.

The front of the market. I sat on the curb to the right.

Fortunately, they showed up pretty quickly, and no one tried to talk to me again, although men in Russia generally tend to stare more than at home. Professor Graybill says it's just common, especially with younger women.

We successfully got to the correct metro stop as a trio, and Katie and Amanda just happened to be walking by the entrance as we made it to street level, so together we headed for where the team dinner was supposed to be last we had heard: the My My next to Red Square. I'm still not sure what the name means, but that was our second or third visit, and it was a really good cafeteria-style chain. There doesn't really seem to be any such thing as small, independently-run restaurants, which Professor Round (British) explained to me the other day: being in business requires larger bribes than small businesses can typically manage, so they're either out-bribed by competitors and squashed out, or become large, expensive, or chain restaurants. Gotta love corruption.

We had to take the long way around, because nobody remembered the shorter route except me, and they didn't trust me, so we were 20 minutes late...but no one else was there. The restaurant had free wifi, so I finally got to check my email, and I discovered 5 emails from Professor Graybill waiting to be read. Oops.

Nothing was urgent, nothing had been changed, and I wasn't on the hook for my failed 3G. There had been some confusion at the hostel (over whether the meal was mandatory, and where everyone was) so they were just late. By the time they got there, I was starving, and I polished off a half of a chicken, grapefruit juice (because I didn't realize what it was), a spinach bliny, and a Russian pastry (it looked like custard, but turned out to have a huge slice of pear in the middle), as well as mors (the better-than-cranberry juice), which comes in a stein. Misha also shared a chocolate bliny with chunks of hazelnuts in it, and Professor Helfant passed around Russian salmon sushi with (of course) sour cream in the middle. I didn't enjoy most of the conversation during the meal, so I focused on pigging out until the more annoying people left. Then Professor Graybill, Misha, Lorelai and I discussed banyas, Russia, religion, and questions; they were all surprised that I hadn't been scared at the banya, which was hilarious because I was totally scared beforehand, but in someone else's control the whole time I was there, which was fine.

Misha and Lorelai left to check out a metro stop Professor Graybill recommended, making the professor and me the only two of the group left in the restaurant. She wanted to buy vodka to bring home, so we walked over to the somewhat higher-end restaurant where I bought chocolate and salami snacks the other day. I got yummy green tea to go, she found her vodka, and we talked about the successes and failures of the trip - and the various people on it - the whole way back. It was really fun.

That was my last glimpse of the Kremlin, and of Moscow. We're leaving so early Sunday, I'll probably be sleeping in the bus. I will miss Moscow. I really liked it here. Also, the kitten was asleep on my should almost the whole time I was writing...but being in the city and checking out a park and forest just made me realize how much I miss trees, and woods, and hiking, which I don't think I've done in years.

Russian Traditions

2014-05-30T13:52:00.002-07:00

This is going to be a very short blog post, for which I am thankful because I can sleep sleep sleep.

After finding a spare top bunk in another girls' room, I got some sleep, although I woke up when Vica got back at 5 AM and again when the baby kitten started crying at 6 AM. The second time, I actually started dreaming that I was drowning the kitten before I woke up, terrified, and realized why I was having my nightmare. When I went into the common room, I considered building it another fort, but that seemed too complicated at 6 AM and not permanent enough, so I just scooped him up, but him on my bunk, climbed up, and curled around him, and we both went to sleep.

I got up again at 9 AM. The plan for the day was to go to a banya - Russian bathhouse - alone, check out the hair salon capabilities, and try the famous sauna experience, which every guidebook swears by. I've never done a "spa day," so I figured if I was going to try it, I might as well try it abroad in Moscow.

The top part of the sign says Sanduny in Russian, and the bottom is "restaurant."

I had picked the best-known of the bathhouses for my experiment: Sanduny, and I had two options for getting there: metro, or walking. I ended up inadvertently choosing walking when I didn't think to load the whole route I was going to take on the mini iPad before I left the hostel. As luck would have it, today was the day my 3G decided not to work, and even when I found free wifi (and, of course, turned the iPad on and off again, and toggled various switches and apps) I couldn't get it to work. So I couldn't look at the map, which meant the metro map app (and just the plain map) couldn't help me navigate, because all I had was an address. I also encountered an intersection where all but two of seven streets were named some variation of Liubianca, without any clarifications to street vs. avenue or place, which confused the heck out of me.

Fortunately, Sanduny was on the map in my guidebook (thank you, Grandma Tremblay). Unfortunately, that map was not the most accurate, and I walked several blocks more than I was expecting, nervous the whole time, before I found the right building. Then, as it turned out, Sanduny is actually a complex rather than a single building, and I went into the restaurant, the men's building, and the beauty salon before a kind receptionist (Katie) helped me find where I was going. She made me tea, asked my name, took me back downstairs to a door, buzzed herself in, and then realized it was the wrong door. Her English was limited, but when the door shut again she looked at me and said, blushing, "Naked. All naked."

Possibly the most ironic part of the entire misadventure was that what I actually need most right now is a haircut, and I ended up at exactly the place for it, but I was too scared to ask for one even when the receptionists put the words in my mouth. Haircuts are scary enough when all parties involved speak fluent English, never mind when, culturally, the hair stylists have no interest in doing what they're asked.

Anyway, once my guide got me to the baths, I spent a lot of money and a lot of time, and there's not a lot I can say about it, but I'm very glad I went. It was totally new and interesting, and though I'm never going to be the kind of girl who goes and beautifies all day, it was fun for this once. The minimum admittance was $30 for 3 hours (there was also a higher level of baths, and every additional thing - bath sheet, slippers, massage, birch-branch-whipping, time - cost more). The men actually had a larger complex than the women, which I found funny, but in both cases the interiors were beautiful tilework, and pictures weren't allowed. Katie dropped me off at the higher level baths, and when I requested to be taken to the lower level, they did not approve. A Russian patron had to step in and translate for us, basically to convince the pushy receptionists that I really did want the lesser experience, with the less intense sauna.

The layout was an external room, like a reception, where everyone got their own couch, samovar of tea, and any extra snacks they felt like buying. Then there was an interior room with a pool, showers, cold baths, and marble benches. Within that was the sauna. The receptionists had the furnace keeper help me, because I was clearly too clueless to figure it all out on my own, and she was amazing.

From the sauna, I went back to the Church of Christ the Savior to meet another student (Jeff) for a Russian Orthodox mass. Once we found each other, we stood awkwardly waiting for it to start for a while before we realized all the patrons were heading down the stairs to the secondary part of the church; it was the same size, just less grand, and mostly tourist-less.

The ceremonies were interesting, but hard to follow. One priest was always in front of the congregation, in a long, fenced-off space in front of the altar (like a very wide altar, with several pedestals for books to read from, flowers, and candelabras) but there were three total, and they were constantly going in and out of the doors in the icon wall. There was also near-constant chanting. When the main priest, who wore all black, paused from a long string of old Slavic, one of the other two would call back from behind the icon wall, or a four-person chorus group would chant responses from the nave. The chorus was by far the most beautiful, but I was impressed by the priests' stamina. Sometimes it seemed like the syllables were unending.

Again, no pictures were allowed (although I did audiotape a little of the sound), and we left after about 45 minutes, as one of the priests came around and wafted incense at everything.

Sleepy Nonsense

2014-05-29T14:37:00.002-07:00

The hostel internet has become more and more maddening (and slow) with time, but I have a kitten in my lap, so all is well.

Today started earlier than yesterday, which is unfortunate since I went to bed later. We met at 10 in the lobby, discussed our readings, and left for the day. Professor Graybill and I were dressed nearly identically (maxi skirts and sandals with light jackets) which ordinarily would have been weird. For today, it just made me feel better about my decision, since 30% chance of rain and high of 71 degrees ended up meaning rain all day at around 50 degrees.

So it was a bit chilly, but we were all a bit chilly. First thing, we got pastries from the vendor on the bridge (mine was cheese - plain, not very filling even with mango/papaya juice) and headed to Red Square and queued for Lenin's tomb with a few other tour groups and some babushkas interspersed throughout, mostly assisted by family. Guards told us who could bring bags in and who couldn't, and Professor Helfant, looking sketchy, left with all of the extra bags strapped to his body. The rest of us proceeded through a metal detector and bag scanner, letting two more guards prod our bags with wands while yet another looked on. When that was over, there was a guard a little further on to command us where to stand and where to move.

Are you getting that there are a lot of guards?

We were watched along a walk, past commemorative stones for Soviet leaders', all the way up to the mausoleum. Appropriately enough, it started raining as the group made our way along; we were moving faster than normal, at the guards' commands, so it didn't take long to get under cover.

The mausoleum was dark, somber, and simple. Pictures weren't allowed, but the inside looked a lot like the outside: large, plain blocks of dark stone, no decorations except simple lettering, and stairs down into the tomb. A guard was at each corner, so there were two at the entrance when we walked in and immediately turned left to go down the stairs, one at the bottom of the stairs where we turned right, one at each of the four corners of the hall where the body was (and where we turned right to go back up a shallow set of stairs) and two more at the exit. Creepy, especially since I didn't speak Russian, but the sharp SHH was fairly universal, if more commanding.

The body itself was...weird. Really weird. It looked too small and pale for such a huge fuss, and it was a little waxy. Facial features like the curve of his eyebrows and his lips stood out sharply. The casket was decorated to look a little like a bed, with folds of red "cloth" and "flowers" (stone) cascading down the sides. It was also lit in red, and there was a glass case on top. The whole thing was so weird, I kept thinking I saw his fingers twitch or his chest move. It looked fake, but it was playing tricks on my eyes.

Anyway, the guards kept us shuffling around and out, back into the rain, where we had to walk past more commemorative stones in the rain all the way across Red Square to the GUM (shopping mall) for cover. We waited there for a long time for the whole group to convene and go to the bathroom, so I went inside and got myself hot chocolate (goriachy chocolat) at one of the insanely spendy stores. It came in a tiny cup (half a normal "small") and it was basically a melted chocolate bar in a cup. It was churning in a machine as I watched, and it may have been the best hot cocoa I'll ever have: bittersweet, overwhelming, intense. I shared it around when I couldn't finish it.

We read a little about the crazy embalming process for the body (dipped in chemicals weekly, a makeup job, secret formulae) before and on the metro to the Novodevichy Convent. The main church was, sadly, closed until "summer" (June) so we were limited to the smaller church, the belltower, two museum exhibits, the grounds, and an excellent bookstore.

As much as I loved the rain today, and rainy days, and the fact that everything reminded me of home (which I miss frequently even though I'm having a great time), I wish that today of all days had been sunny, because I would have loved to just sit outside and contemplate. The grounds were carefully cultivated, and the detailed planning was lovely. Instead, I sat in the church for a long time, and, since I fell in love with the candles there and took far too many pictures of them, I bought myself a green and gold hanging candle for my room from the bookstore, which had awesome prices. It actually caused quite a bit of trouble - when I asked the young nun for the candle, she had to ask her superior, fetch a footstool, fetch a taller footstool, and ask another patron (a taller man) for help. We got there eventually...

When the babushka manning the museum started babbling to me in Russian about the exhibit, I was fortunate enough to have Vica (fluent in Russian) come interpret for me, and I showed her the spring the convent had been built around. The spring actually saved them when Napoleon invaded and tried to bring it down: nuns got water to put out the fire. Unfortunately, it's under glass under an exhibit, so the pictures don't look like much.

I had bought a really nice little painting of the convent from the painter at the gate when we entered, and I'm glad I did, because I really liked it there. Afterwards, we went to a cafe simply called Kafeteria, with an emblem of a nude bird. I don't know why, but the bird was deliberately given cleavage, and it was very memorable. The food there was Russian and delicious; I had a tart cherry danish and deep-fried diced chicken which was called something special I can't remember right now (anyone? comment?), and tried brown bread and biscotti. I also accidentally bought what a classmate told me was a sausage, but turned out to be cacao powder with flour and sugar rolled into a tube...basically, cookie dough. As many of you probably know, I love raw cookie dough, so that was fine with me.

Over the meal we talked kittens, texting, and interesting stories. Then we were off to the metro again, this time for one of Stalin's Seven Sisters: a series of concrete, cake-like skyscrapers deliberately built all together to boost the lackluster skyline. They're surprisingly attractive, particularly for Soviet-era building, but up close the size was overwhelming.

My face, for those of you who don't have Facebook

From there, we passed a park with a concert of a bad band covering good songs on our way to an overlook of the entire city. The financial district stood out drastically, and the view was amazing, but all but three of us (me, Aaron, and Andrew) doubled back to the concert. We tried to walk to what Professor Graybill said was the nearest metro station, but the only bridge appeared to be lacking in pedestrian walkways, so we headed back the way we came and, after a little snippiness back and forth, took the metro back. I stopped for cold tea before coming back to the hostel.

The end of the day was mildly stressful/disappointing. James, a senior on the trip, walked out with the boy who invited me to the club (Sasha) without a second glance my way, even though I told him I was invited. So, no Russian vodka for me. Amanda, the roommate who has no qualms asking for anything but who is maddeningly unaware of others, "felt sick" and therefore took my bed, the bottom bunk. Of'course, if she is sick, there's no way I'm going to sleep in her bed and risk getting what she's got, so I've effectively been kicked out of my room. I couldn't find anyone who was interested in doing what I want to do tomorrow for free day...eek.

Having Kittens

2014-05-28T14:24:00.002-07:00

In both the literal and the figurative sense, today was a day for having kittens.

All I really wanted this morning when I woke up was either a kitten or sweet tea. In case I haven't mentioned the resident hostel kitten, her name is Sasandra, she's a grey tabby, and she looks to be around 10 weeks. She bites when playing but is otherwise friendly.

As for tea, the word in Russian for "tea" is chai, which means there is no such thing as "chai tea" because it would be chai chai. I even checked with the professors about it, and they (fluent Russian speakers) said Russians drink only black or green tea, and maybe flower teas now.

So I wanted sweet tea, which doesn't necessarily mean chai, but should, in my book, involve something creamy. Another thing the professors told me: Russian coffeehouses don't do tea lattes, and the odds of me being able to correctly and assertively pronounce the words that I would need to order what I would want are nill anyway. For the most part, service here has been mediocre, and my understanding is that Russia doesn't have much of a service industry as a rule - it just isn't a priority. There have been some really excellent servers who try very hard to make things great for us as a huge group, and for the non-Russian speakers, but many have also been absent and completely uncaring. Beyond that, trying to order something in Russian if you can't speak Russian is awful; the more you mangle the mothertongue, the more they glare. They also quote higher prices, because they "assume you have money" (read: are annoyed).

So when I walked into the hostel lobby and there was no kitten in sight, I had a dilemma. On the one hand, I could walk the 20 minutes to the food court next to the Kremlin, where I knew there was bubble tea, even though I didn't really want bubble tea. On the other hand, I could search out a Starbucks, but I really didn't want to spend money on them on principle, and there was always the risk of getting lost and/or not finding it at all.

I picked the safe option and, after blogging and texting home and working on the mini-project due today, I headed for the Kremlin. Unfortunately, I didn't count on morning traffic, and I couldn't get across the massive eight-lane road. The police officer kept shouting at me in Russian, but he never made the "come" gesture.

So I walked 15 minutes away and turned around and walked 15 minutes back, tea-less, feeling like a total idiot. the kittens still weren't there, and we had to do presentations on our Old Arbat walks. I was last, and I talked about how the shopkeepers follow customers around. In my experience, street vendors are the most aggressive; here, the shopkeepers are much more invested in making a sell - and in making sure no one takes pictures or shoplifts. I walked into the stores alone, and there was always someone peering over my shoulder, which I hated. I felt more comfortable shopping in the outdoor art markets and checking out the church.

Anyway, during the presentation, I had to explain that my location options on the mini-iPad weren't working and the photos weren't geotagged with coordinates. Renee, one of my roommates, immediately told me that I was doing it wrong and everything would work just fine and tried to snatch the iPad from me, condescension dripping. I just about had kittens. It was exactly why I didn't like some of my high school classmates and teachers, and why math tutoring didn't work out the first few tries.

But I got over it, got over myself, and had a great day. We left after everyone had presented on yesterday (around 1:30 PM) for lunch, so I walked to the food court and got my bubble tea after all (and it was really worth it). From there, we caught the metro to meet the British professor from yesterday and did another walking tour, of the new financial center of Moscow, which is still under construction.

The construction was begun in the early 2000s, before the Great Recession, and now that Russia is slowly regaining its wealth, they've restarted work. It's an odd spot for the financial capital of the city (and, by association, country) since the metro only services the station once every four minutes instead of every 40 seconds like everywhere else, but the reason we were there was to discuss the informal work force and look at the massive (insane) 4-story shopping mall within the complex, filled with high-end foreign stores, giant matryoshka, and a fountain with a water display every half hour.

I was completely overwhelmed, especially since I don't even like the mall in general, but I checked it out before accidentally ordering a ridiculously overpriced fresh-made juice (pineapple, mango, and pomegranate). Then I sat in front of the inevitable Starbucks (the oligarchs tried to keep it out by creating their own chain with the same name) until the group regrouped and left again.

After some more neighborhood wanderings and talks from the British professor, a group split off to go back to the hostel while the rest of us headed to a cafe hoping to meet some of the professor's English-speaking Russian students. Unfortunately, they have final exams next week, so after hanging around the cafe for a brief while we went to dinner.

I nabbed two sandwiches (salmon and turkey, with pickles, of course) and we all ate as a group in a nearby park. The entertainment for the night was a troupe of fire artists, some of whom were also dancers. We watched them go through practicing and warm-ups, which was a lot of fun. The dance style was just like traditional Hindi stuff we saw at ICS.

And that's just about it. Instead of having kittens over the mild irritants of the morning, I got back to the hostel and had a kitten.

He doesn't have a name yet, so if anyone has any suggestions, I'm wide open. I'm thinking maybe Tsar something. He's a really sweet tabby, very young (6 weeks? 8?) and he loves to cuddle, mostly because open spaces scare him. He's been on my lap for almost 4 hours now, and I'm only letting him go because I have to shower and sleep.

A Russian boy staying here also asked if I wanted to get drinks tomorrow night. So there's that. I fully anticipate more kittens.

Blisters on Blisters

2014-05-27T23:04:00.000-07:00

This morning, we left the hostel in favor of food as quickly as we could. Half the group headed to a little supermarket, while the other half stayed back at the food stands from yesterday.

One of the things that has been the most limiting and the most expansive for me in Russia is not knowing any Russian. I can sound out words, and sometimes they correspond, but when it comes to something like wanting plain yogurt or ginger ale...I'm doomed unless I can find a brand I recognize. Ordering is just pointing and smiling. So I didn't really get what I wanted in the grocery store before we headed for the metro and Old Arbat street.

Somewhat ironically, all of Old Arbat has been redone. It's a walking street only, and the buildings are mostly new or under construction...but it's really nice. Restaurants and tourist shops (which, by the way, are either insanely expensive or utterly kitschy or a conglomeration of the two with nothing in the middle) line pretty much the whole street, and street artists set up their shops in free, permanent stands. There are lots of statues and memorials, and it's easy to find public toilets (although you have to pay). There's even a graffiti wall and an old book market.

In retrospect, I wish I'd spent more time on the book market. I glanced over a few things, but I figured I didn't want to lug extra pounds around for the remainder of the trip, and anyway, I don't read Russian. Of course, when met back with the group at the end of the street (McDonald's was our set point) one of them had an early edition Tolstoy, which made me feel like an idiot.

The point of the trip was to explore the area using our iPads (apps like RunKeeper, geotagging options for pictures, and maps were supposed to supplement things). That part was really just mildly annoying. I mostly used my real camera - like for the picture above, one of the "Seven Sisters," a group of skyline-defining towers from the early communist period meant to show their might and power. They're actually pretty cool, although now they're mostly hotels and stuff.

For the sake of the project, I did some wandering down side streets and such. All I really found were loads of security guards (not sure why, hoping to ask later today) and this church. The sign was lit up, and they're actually kind of common here; they're always red, they're always lighted, and they always say "Christ Risen." In the U.S., I don't know if I would ever expect to see something like it (or maybe in a strongly proselytizing church, and even then it would be a bit cheesy) but every church here also has it's own gift shop, so it's a bit different.

Anyway, we left by metro and headed back to our stop under the Church of Christ the Savior (if you're confused, it's okay; there was another one in St. Petersburg), only this time, we actually went in. When I say we, I mean around half the students - the boys, and a handful of girls - because the rest of the girls were too scantily clad to be let back in. This seemed funny to me, given that the church is an imitation only built a decade or two ago, and it used to be a pool, but I was glad to be one of the lucky ones to go in. I had carefully tugged my skirt down a bit and pulled on my headscarf before I got to the security guard, so he just warned me not to take photos in Russian and away I went.

It was a big enough church to wander for a bit before heading back out on the plaza to meet a British geography professor teaching for the year at a Russian university. He had an amazingly thick accent, although not so much that we couldn't understand him - just enough to be entertaining. He led us on a walking tour of the riverbank neighborhoods while essentially teaching us a class; I took extensive videos with the iPad for my project, and just because he was really interesting.

Midway through the tour, as we were standing outside this nondescript building (which happens to be the most expensive real estate in the world) the thunder and lightning we'd been in the middle of all afternoon finally produced rain. It was a downpour. The professors had collectively just warned us not to sit in the area due to the presence of a private security guard and the fact that the richest people in the world own apartments here, but we had to take cover in the overhang with the guard, who eyed us suspiciously. The only reasons these apartments are worth are 1) they have a guaranteed river view no one else can build in front of since they're on the river, and 2) there are no apartments to be had in Moscow, because everyone is too afraid to move as a result of housing scams.

Anyway, we stood awkwardly with the security guard, who told us emphatically that we couldn't take pictures, then sat on the pavement, then finally were invited to sit on a series of benches that I'm sure none of the rich clientele ever use. Cars with tinted windows drove into the underground parking lot as the British professor discussed protests, Pussy Riot, and his job. When there was a lull, in the downpour, half the group made a dash for the hostel, while the rest of us went on. The security guard warmed up to us when he realized we were a class of foreigners learning about his country, and he smiled when I thanked him as we left.

Our hostel is on an island in a fork in the river, so we crossed back over another bridge and walked towards it, on the professor's teaching route. The makeup of the school where he teaches in Russia is actually just like Colgate: very wealthy, not-so-smart students, and less wealthy scholarship students, since most of the wealthy who are really smart end up in Europe for college and grad school. He was an interesting guy.

There was a lot of park space on the way with interesting statues, and we talked about how people don't talk about Stalin and how the entire country is still conflicted about communism in general, which seems odd to us as outsiders.Then, tired, we all headed for the restaurant the professors had picked for dinner: North Korean. Only in Russia...

I didn't know much of anything about Korean food, so the adults ordered dishes for the whole table while we watched a propaganda video on the greatness of the country. It was a very strange experience, but the food was delicious: mildly spicy kimchi; diced pork, chicken, mutton, and duck in sauces; fried tofu; awesome noodles; and lots of pickled vegetables. The fish had such strong flavor that it was a little too much for me (shocking, I know) and I got made fun of the entire meal for my inability to handle chopsticks - who knew you just shoveled rice into your face??? - but by the end of it, I could get single peanuts from plate to mouth without a hitch, which I consider a success.

The only bad thing was standing up at the end and realizing how many new blisters I had...

2014-05-26T21:56:00.001-07:00

Okay. Rant over. So after flailing around with the iPad alarm for a little while and working on my laptop for a bit, I met the group in the common room at 9:30 and we headed off for breakfast. Across the bridge, we stopped at a small stand (think NYC food vendor) in front of the Church of Christ the Savior (above) and bought pastries and bottled drinks. My choice: green tea and a savory liver pastry. It was actually quite good, albeit a little...tangy. I can't think of a better word to describe it right now. I'm glad I've experienced it!

We walked around the church and sat on the steps. It was closed for Mondays, but we talked about how the current building is actually an exact replica of a significantly older building that was blown up to symbolize the end of the old order by the communists. They wanted to build a monument capped with a multi-story statue of Lenin, but, upon discovering it would bankrupt them, used the newly laid foundation as the world's biggest pool instead - for public use. It fell into disrepair with the fall of communism, and was eventually rebuilt as close to the old church as possible. Wasteful? Maybe. Historically interesting? Yes.

After the discussion we walked past the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where one of the three-man guard whistled at me for sitting in an inappropriate location and made me stand up. Then we went through the Red Square to Saint Basil's - about a 15-minute walk, all in all. Amazing. In our readings, Saint Basil's was alternatively compared to some fruit or vegetable (pineapples, onions) and nonexistent beings (dragons) out of utter bewilderment on the parts of travel writers. I personally was enjoying the spiny, colorful, scaled dragon analogy, and the exterior and general, but it was the interior that was really stunning.

Every square inch was decorated, and while it didn't necessarily match in a sense we would call traditional, it totally worked. It reminds me a lot of two churches I went to see in Padua a few months ago. The biggest differences were the filler patterns, the intensity of the color, and the shape of the interior. This church was a warren of tunnels, stairs, and passages, and while the upper floor had something of a systematic layout, I couldn't find one for the bottom floor at all. On both floors there were multiple icon walls, relics, and displays. This is my favorite church in Russia so far. There was even a group of four men singing in one of the chapels, and not only was the music beautiful and their harmony incredible, the volume they could generate was unbelievable. (Blogspot has apparently decided not to support video uploads.) I could spend hours there and never get tired/

But, of course, being with a group means that isn't up to me. After a quick, fun photoshoot with Misha, we all met up outside and went to the GUM (very famous, high-end shopping mall instigated by the government - the name is a Russian acronym, and it's actually on the Red Square) for lunch.

It basically looked like a fancy greenhouse, with the most expensive stores on the bottom floor and the least expensive on the top (third) floor, where we ate at Sbarro. It was so hot with all of the concentrated sunlight that they had umbrellas with fans over the tables, and misters over that. When we were all done eating and wanted to explore a little more, Jeff and I tried to go to the first floor. That was difficult in and of itself because after we walked down to the second floor, it seemed impossible to find stairs to the first floor, so we had to use outdoor stairs and walk back in. But then, as we walked in, the security guard at the front stared at me, turned around to watch us walk by, and walked behind us for a few seconds. Never in the U.S. would anything like that happen...but this place was nice enough that we didn't even recognize the designers, the people walking by were promenading arm and arm, and we didn't realize we were ordering a joint cream soda until after the fact. They had the flavoring in these cool glass dispensers, with taps that looked like they were for beer. It was the best cream soda I've ever had.

Government building in the Kremlin

Back outside, we met on the curb at a distance from the unfriendly police and, since Lenin's Tomb was closed, walked to the entrance to the Kremlin and the Kremlin Museums. Of course, getting in was easier said than done; the professors had to go buy the tickets, and distribute them, and get us past the Russian-speaking security who was not impressed that only 3/4 of us had student ID when we all bought student tickets and wouldn't let us in, so the professors had to go back and buy more tickets, shepherd us through, and get detained at security while we all explored.

I expected most of the buildings to be governmental, modern, and ugly. Instead, while quite a few of them were governmental, most of them were also tasteful, and there was a series of churches at the heart of it all that were the main draw. We couldn't go in to all of the exhibits, and we couldn't take pictures in the church interiors, but suffice it to say they were all incredible. There was a display of "Kremlin Hordes" (that was really the title) with piles of loose coins and jewelry, and church after church of competitive beauty.

We reconvened as a group near the entrance; the professors had gotten in eventually, and Professor Helfant took most of the class back to the hostel to recover from the heat and walking while Professor Graybill took the rest of us out further away for sweet treats (bubble tea for me) and to see the sites. The ex-home of the KGB was under construction (it still looked creepy) and I couldn't figure out how to explain to the women in two pharmacies that I needed hairpins, not a hairclip (they were really nice and helpful, and I needed a hairclip too, so it worked out) but I had a good time wandering. Eventually I was on my own again (deliberately, this time) and I went into a grocery store in an underpass for snacks: some sort of salami, and juice. The juice here is really good. I also know my way around the Kremlin and back to the hostel, so no one need panic if I say I'm alone.

I sat in the park outside the Kremlin with my goodies and worked on the readings. It was mostly uneventful; smokers were polite enough to stay away, and the people walking by, while mildly interesting, weren't distracting. One man who sat next to me (probably in his 70s) was wearing double-lensed glasses and working on a drawing. He had apparently decided to use me as a model for part of it, and I finally looked up at him while he as staring at me. He kept staring for a second, as if he didn't realize that this was weird, and then said a whole bunch of Russian that I completely didn't understand, got up, and walked away.

Professor Graybill showed up shortly thereafter and sat with me and talked about the trip so far for a little bit, and how remarkable it is that no one has rebelled or gotten drunk. Then we headed off to dinner at a cafeteria-style Russian chain (the only affordable way to eat) where I had fresh made mors (berry juice) pork in gravy and a salad of beets, potatoes, and peas. It was all very good. They also gave us great caramels.

The Fabrika ("factory") Hostel

Finally, we headed back for the hostel. It felt like a much longer walk going back than it had going away, but I was happy to reach my bed, take a shower, and get a little work done.

PSA: Future Blog Posts

2014-05-26T13:56:00.000-07:00

All blog posts will likely occur around 7 AM Moscow time (11 PM East Coast, 8 PM West Coast, no idea what time zone Denver is in...) for the following reasons:

Rant Warning. The following is my selfish frustrations. Feel free to skip the next paragraph. I woke up early this morning in order to post belatedly. The problem is that in this hostel, my room is directly next to the common room, which is frequented by men who I'm sure are perfectly nice, but with whom I have no desire to acquaint myself. As a result, I can't work outside in the hall at nights as I did in the Location Hostel in St. Petersburg. This has the girl in the bunk above me "begging" (her words, not mine) me to not work "all hours of the night, or work outside," because the sound of typing is too much for her delicate sleep cycles to handle. What really gets me is that she has no problem asking anyone and everyone for whatever she wants, and she came completely unprepared and is constantly losing and forgetting things, but she is utterly unaware and uncaring of what others want or need.

The Red Square entrance at night, just because

Moscow!!!

2014-05-25T22:22:00.001-07:00

After breakfast and discussion in the common area, as usual, everyone hustled to pack, bring their stuff down to the lobby, and run errands. Most of us were so discombobulated that we had no idea what dayt was; a few people tried to go to the bank, only to find it closed - Sunday!

I got myself some snacks for the train ride from the grocery store in the tunnel underpass one last time before we headed out as a group for the train station. It wasn't far from the metro station we used every day (basically around the corner), and it wasn't too hot for once, but I definitely overpacked for this trip, and I absolutely regretted it yesterday.

Inside the train station reception area

The professors already had our train tickets, so we headed into the train station and sat in a giant clump in the middle of the floor near the platform entrance, which actually had metal detectors (albeit ones nobody paid attention to) and bag scanners. When our train arrived at the platform, we headed through. Professor Graybill had interpreted my ticket for me: Second Class, Coach 8, Seat 42. Unfortunately, not everyone has ridden trains as much as I have, and most of the group stopped at Coach 2...I may have laughed at them a little.

Our high-speed train (left)

I had an aisle seat, but I could see out the windows on both sides a little bit. The views were stunning. The Russian countryside seemed like one big pine forest, with occasional birch stands interspersed, and lots of little ponds, rivers, and villages split by the tracks. The villages were actually really interesting - all houses with steeply slanted roofs made of what looked like wood, or some kind of thatching. Some of them were nicer and more European looking, and some looked ancient and dilapidated, but it was surprising how many towns had their own church, complete with gold domes.

It wasn't as long of a trip as I had thought it would be - around 5 hours instead of 7 - but I still managed to finish all my readings, play some games on the iPad, listen to music, take a nap, and explore the train. It was a fancy train. All the doors were sliding glass, automated, and smoothly silent. There was a dining car and dining carts, and the aisles were at least twice the width of an airplane, as were the seats. Of course, the food was also like on an airplane (I got a "pork sandwich," which had a single strip of peppered meat and a single piece of lettuce) and the announcements (in Russian and English) were equally annoying, but it was still loads of fun.

As soon as we stepped out into the Moscow train station, after we untangled the stacks of bags on the luggage rack, we could see golden domes and spires in the distance. Just getting out of the station took some stairs - a lot of stairs - and unfortunately, unlike in St. Petersburg, there were no ramps for us to use for our rolling bags. But right in front of us was a beautiful domed building built for commercial purposes despite its church-like appearance, and just before that was our metro stop, so we headed into the depths and jumped on a train for seven stops.

When we re-emerged, we were standing in front of another gold-domed building, but this one was actually a church which they promised we'll go back to. At a distance, across the river, we could see our hostel. It's the redbrick building, and it used to be a chocolate factory, but now holds several dozen different businesses.

Crossing the bridge wasn't so bad, just a little hot, but the stairs down on the other side (about three stories' worth) were difficult, and trying to find the actual entrance to the hostel was brutal. We walked all the way around the entire building (including a hopping 4-floor dance club with earsplitting music), hot and sweaty, before turning into a street that led to a courtyard with a tiny doorway and a huge staircase. The hostel, of course, is on the fifth floor, and it got hotter and hotter as we went up. Most of the group stopped at the bottom to wait until Professor Helfant successfully checked in, just in case there was a chance we didn't have to go all the way up, but I walked straight up.

There, I was greeted by a perfect sight: a spacious, nicely decorated common room, with a fan and a young boy playing with a kitten. I promptly made friends with the boy and his kitten, which is, in the words of our hosts, a "communal pet." Of course, this is Russia.

It took them a while to get us our rooms. This is a small place, and they aren't that well organized - the'y seemed a little shellshocked by the sudden appearance of our group. After a brief argument with some other students on how the kitten (a few months old) didn't like being picked up by the scruff of its neck and I should put it down - it's not like I've worked in a cat shelter for three years or anything - we had to choose rooms, which always leads to awkward maneuvering for girls. Fortunately, I ended up in the room of girls who goes to bed early, and I get along with most of them okay.

Our rooms are for six people with creaky bunk beds, but they're kind of pretty, roomier, and each person has our own outlet and light. The beds have mattress pads instead of actual mattresses and they're so hot we're all sleeping on top of the blankets for extra padding, but I like it. The staff came in to clear out some stuff that had been left behind, mostly food on shelves, before a man unexpectedly barged in as one girl had her shirt off to show us that his bag was under one of the beds and this was his room, which was hilarious.

Those of us who were hungry headed off for the Kremlin and Red Square to get food at the only place that was still open at 9 PM - a high-end shopping mall that was the first sign of post-Soviet capitalism in Moscow. Getting there involved a convoluted path around an 8-lane street and down through a subway station/underpass, but it was a really nice walk, both in terms of temperature and views. Moscow has much more variety than St. Petersburg. Two girls, Misha and Lorelai, disappeared midway through the walk, but that's pretty much par for the course for them.

This was where we all went to eat...a fast food blini joint. Yeah. It was pretty terrifying. I'm around the three-year-old level of reading, where I can sound out a word if you give me 10 minutes and a lot of patience, but unlike a three-year-old, the odds that I'll actually know what a word means are about zero. No one had time to go through the menu with me, and they were out of borscht, which was the only thing I really wanted to try, so I ordered at random based on a picture. Whatever I got, it had a mildly spicy pink sauce, mushrooms, beef strips, and mild cheese. We all chowed down as quickly as possible to be out in time for closing, and watched silently as guards kicked out a raucous party (of all African-Russians), which Professor Graybill said was racism in action. Then we raced to the top floor.

View of the tops of the windows of the shopping mall

Outside, we went straight to the Red Square, which is enormous. I wanted to put up a video panorama of it, but blogspot is having errors when I try to upload, so here's a picture of Lenin's Tomb instead.

It's pretty hideous, in case you're wondering about the accuracy of the picture. We were also across from the GUM, a famous shopping center, and St. Basil's cathedral, which was blocked by a scaffolding. As we all wandered, Misha and Lorelai reappeared, and three other girls disappeared entirely, so we ended up sitting on the curb watching the crowd and waiting while Professor Graybill searched for them.

She never found them, so we all headed back towards the hostel around 11:!5 PM. We met Professor Helfant on the way in - he was about to go look for food - and he was nice enough to tell us that they'd just gone back to the hostel for the night without finding or emailing us, despite having 3G.

This post...

2014-05-25T14:33:00.000-07:00

...is to inform readers (if you exist?) that I will not be able to post until tomorrow morning, due to finicky roommates who made us late back to the room and wanted to go to sleep early. Heaven forbid I disturb them with my typing.

I'm in Moscow, and loving it!

2014-05-24T14:37:00.002-07:00

I may have permanent jetlag. Alternatively, this blog may be a serious timesuck, to the extent of cutting into my sleep time.

We had breakfast in the lobby this morning, as usual.

I took a picture of my tea, to make sure I would be able to find it again. Professor Graybill brought us Russian marshmallows, which start out tasting like regular marshmallows, but then have a sort of fruity flavor like juice instead of pure sugar, and are definitely not a breakfast food. We all got SIM cards installed in our iPads and gathered in groups at the bottom of the stairs for the day to head off as a single large group for the Russian Museum (of art) by metro. It's actually right by the colorful Church of Christ the Savior on Spilled Blood that I visited a few times.

The main Cyrillic is pronounced tsickoridge

The museum building itself is an ex-palace (there are a lot of those in St. Petersburg) and, as the name suggests, it focuses on Russian art from medieval icons through modern monstrosities. We actually entered via the modernist gallery, which I promptly exited as soon as I had a map.

We spent a few hours in the museum, and I won't bore you with all the details of the artworks I saw, although I took far too many pictures of them and put them all on Facebook. Part of the problem is that I'm not sure yet what I'll be doing my final project on, so I want to cover as many bases as possible with pictures (not that it's likely I could do art history comparisons for a geography class, but it was so cool!). The icons were mostly painted on wood with gold leaf and/or lettering (ancient Russian cursive calligraphy, wow) and both they and many of the more modern works covered stories I didn't recognize, which was really interesting. A lot of works were stylistically very similar to European works from period to period, and it was interesting to see the Russian take on other cultures, from "Italian Comedy" to "English Dancing" or "Buddhist Temple" and everything in between.

Russian take on the 7-winged Seraphim

Side Note: I'm sitting in the hall to type this up, so as not to disturb the rest of my roommates, and it isn't very wide, but there are a lot of rooms. Consequently, all the people who are coming back for the night - surprisingly, this is a lot of Russians - have to pass me by, and my legs stretch, flat on the floor, to the opposite wall. When Russians come upon my legs, they are completely lost as to what they're supposed to do. Sometimes they get my attention so I can move them. Sometimes a friendly non-Russian shows them how it is possible to step over the legs, which seems to be mind-bending. Generally, they are confused by the concept of sitting in the hall at all, and they all laugh at me. Coming from ICS, where space was at a premium...it's really odd.

Anyway. I checked out some laquer boxes in the museum gift shop, because they're supposed to be very Russian; I liked the ones with fairy tales I recognized, like Peter and the Firebird, but they are exorbitantly expensive and I honestly can't come up with a good reason I need a little box. I also tried to mail postcards in the basement post office, but the worker there was ancient and knew no English, so I decided to wait for greater certainty about the stamp I would be purchasing. Then it was back out into the sun - a Hare Krishna dance was taking place on the entrance steps - and off to lunch in another cafeteria-style restaurant. I had a kebab and cream-based radish salad, both of which were excellent and cheap: winning combination.

Next, we hopped on the metro to visit a far western neighborhood where one of the seniors - James - was in his homestay last year. It was a pretty bleak neighborhood; we rode the metro to the end of the line, and got off into a shopping center to rival Time Square for signage and cheesy music. It was a mini-shopping mall, and it was strange considering there were babushki selling skirts, fresh produce, and knitted clothes just outside. Most of the buildings were Soviet era, and most of the development was very much in progress. Russians lounged on the riverbanks soaking up the sun (Speedos were unfortunately popular). James got us up to his old apartment in groups, while the professors sat on the grass with leftovers and discussed our video projects. The view from his floor (22, top) all the way to the ocean was pretty stunning.

We explored the neighborhood a little bit more by the newer buildings farther down in the picture, but all we really found was broken glass and heat, so we all went to the grocery store to hydrate (losing two girls in the process), then boarded the metro for our fancy Georgian restaurant.

As it turned out, it was the restaurant that those of us who stuck around for Swan Lake had eaten at already, but nobody minded because it was so good. I got Georgian pear lemonade and a seafood soup (with sturgeon and salmon), and the table shared around cheese bread (with more interesting, mild cheese on top of an excellent bread, like the world's best pizzaish thing) and grape leaves stuffed with ground beef. I also tried a few other peoples' food, and it was all excellent.

All in all, it was a great day. We came back to the hostel to pack to leave for Moscow tomorrow at noon, and I feel ready to say goodbye to St. Petersburg.

Be Impressed

2014-05-23T13:57:00.003-07:00

Both I and my laptop fell asleep before I even started this post, so it's a small miracle that I'm writing tonight. Facebook is driving me nuts, my apostrophe key is broken so that if I typed normally, there would be interspersed lines of apostrophes in every word, and I really need a shower.

As I was writing last night's post, one of my roommates got up and asked me to move out to the hall because I was disturbing her so much. Naturally, I was a little skeptical, given that she was using an eye mask and ear plugs and from what I can tell, she has a little growing up to do, not to mention that she told us she sometimes can't fall asleep for no reason whatsoever. But I obliged. I was even nice about it. That said, if they try to put six of us in one room again, I'm pretty sure either the room will explode or there will be Agatha Christie-esque carnage. That princess is going to have to learn that not everything will be just so all the time.

I also had to shower in the dark, because the motion sensor light in my room stopped working about midway through, the same time as the water got burning hot, slowly decreased to a trickle, and wouldn't change. I eventually realized the problem was a kink in the hose (it was a handheld nozzle), but whoever thought motion detector lights in the shower were a good idea has clearly never tried to shower in the dark before. According to Graybill, Russian oligarchs sink money into real estate development here as pet projects, which would explain a lot.

Anyway, on to this morning! I woke up at 7:30 (apparently there were raucous Russians in the hall) and couldn't fall back asleep, so I've been tired all day. I've been trying very hard not to also be grumpy. Professor Graybill brought us fruit, mild soft cheese, excellent Georgian (the country) bread, chocolate, and juice for breakfast, and when I finally made it down, it made me a little happier. In light of the fact that anyone who didn't leave the ballet early wasn't back until very late (and even those who did were pretty late) they had cancelled the readings for the morning, so instead we just planned. Almost everyone wanted to go to the Winter Palace, and we left in two waves; mine was the first, with Becky (senior), Sarah (ex-roommate), Shelley (who Professor Graybill paired with me so she would be safe), and Nora and Julia (best friends).

At the Winter Palace, a short metro ride away, we walked straight through the main entrance into an enormous, pretty courtyard, then into the building proper to get tickets.

Becky really wanted to take a tour, so we signed up for one at 11:45. Meanwhile, Shelley disappeared without a word to buy water, so we all stood and worried by security until she reappeared with a bottle she couldn't bring in, then left again to check the bottle at the coat check or some such thing. Past security, the rest of us got drinks at the museum cafe; I also got a KitKat bar. I've been trying them in every country, and they're a little different everywhere. In Russia they're unusually thick, and the chocolate is very sweet.

The first thing the guide did when our tour started a few minutes later was lead us up these stairs. It was like nothing had changed and the building was still occupied by a royal family, if you ignore the tourists. I felt weirdly elegant. The tour guide was a Russian whose English was great, but heavily accented, which made him sadly difficult to understand. In combination with the echoing ceilings and the other tour groups, it was almost impossible to follow. But he led us through a little of a lot of things: special exhibits of old clothes, the Dutch masters, Roman statues, a rooftop garden, a gold automaton, river views, banquet tableware, religious paintings, Russian art, apartments preserved as they had been in various centuries, and even two paintings of Madonna and Child by Leonardo Da Vinci. They were still ugly.

I mostly liked the architectural details and the furniture, and when we came to the end of the tour in the gift shop, a group of us headed back up to check out some more.The bathtub-sized "wine fountain" was especially appealing. Unfortunately, no one else was as enamored as I was, so like a responsible young adult I left with the group after an hour and a half and stuck with the Russian speakers, despite the fact that I could have been swallowed up in that museum for hours. But when they said they wanted to go straight back to the hostel, shopping in the souvenir places the whole way and hitting up as many fur shops as possible, I drew the line. I asked one of the girls if it was just straight down Nevsky Prospekt (the "main drag") to the hostel, she said yes, and I went straight for the clearly visible St. Isaac's Cathedral. On my way, I actually ran into another group of Colgate students (Aaron, Renee, Andrew, Jack) but they had just been where I was going and were going where I had just been, so we passed each other up.

Unfortunately, the Cathedral interior was closed for some sort of rally, which actually upset me because the bleachers and the speaker were outside, and they didn't need to mess around with the museum at all, and I was there at 1:30 and they weren't supposed to close until 5:30. But there was nothing I could do, so I went for the next nearest monument: the Bronze Horseman, a tribute to Peter the Great.

The dome of the Cathedral taunting me in the background

The group that was supposed to be on their way to the Hermitage showed up there, sans one person, and we were all equally confused to see each other. But we decided it was in our mutual interest to walk along the water together. It was the bay proper, not just a river or canal, so it smelled like the ocean. There was no shade, so it was hot. Two of the other three stopped halfway across a bridge to an island (I still don't know why) and after I told the third, who is a bit clueless, that we should head for "that big shiny thing over there" and he agreed, he doubled back to talk with them. I found a patch of shade and put on sunscreen until they caught up, and told them to go on ahead...and completely lost them as we went in opposite directions.

That big shiny thing turned out to be an ex-Russian orthodox cathedral in the process of being converted to other usable spaces, including a bookstore and a restaurant, without any exterior alteration. I know, it sounds impossible, but it was real. It was also next to the harbor, with lots of shipping cranes and cruise ships, which meant loads of tacky souvenir shops and zero places with wifi - which was unfortunate, because I was supposed to check in with the professors and it was two miles back past the bridge.

The most modern places are the ones that guarantee wifi, so I found a garish bubble tea cafe and got green tea so I could use their wifi and let everyone know I was okay, albeit annoyed that everyone had disappeared. Then I started walking down Nevsky Prospekt.

This is a Starbucks. That signs says Starbucks. I am not joking.

This was the beginning of the end for me. No one and nothing - not the professors at the beginning of the day, not the Colgate girl I asked in the middle of the day, note my iPad map - showed that I needed to take a turn off Nevsky Prospekt to actually get to my hostel. I mapped out the shops I wanted to visit based on my guidebook, and strolled off, happy to explore and shop in non-touristy shops on my own time.

Unfortunately, the guidebook edition I had was a little outdated (2011), so even the shops listed as "practically an institution" had disappeared, and as time passed, I got more and more interested in just being back at my hostel. But even as I picked up speed, I felt more and more convinced that I was going the wrong way, and that I should have gotten there already. In the end, it took me 9 hot miles and a second trendy internet cafe where the staff was not impressed by my inability to speak Russian to finally find the hitherto unrealized turn. I walked all the way from the end to end of Nevsky Prospekt, and if I never see it again, I will not mind. I wanted to be seeing sites and doing artsy/cultural things, not trekking the streets of the city past ugly sign after ugly sign advertising the same Russian chain stores.

Where I ought to have turned

My hostel was the most relieving sight of the day, when it finally came into view. I sat in the lobby and worked on post cards while drinking tea and informing my mother I was alive and well (barely), and then headed up to the rooftop restaurant with one of my roommates, Chevonne, for some real Russian food. I had Russian champagne, which is basically just sweet sparkling wine, and beef dumplings, which were really similar to potstickers, except they were big and came with sour cream and red peppers. Professor Graybill sat down with us briefly to discuss our day and plans for tomorrow, and then I made a quick pit stop in the underground grocery store for juice (hydration) and went back to my room and accidentally fell asleep. Not sure my feet are still attached.

The hostel exterior

Now for that shower...

No Complaints

2014-05-22T17:14:00.001-07:00

This is the way a blog ends...with too little sleep and too many roommates.

We again discussed readings over breakfast, which today included fresh fruit (pears, bananas, apples) carefully washed and dried by Professor Graybill, in addition to more berry pies. Then we discussed logistics. The most unfortunate piece of information was the news that the hostel accidentally gave us one more room than we deserved, so the three girls' rooms had to condense to two. Of course, mine ended up being the room that had to split up and move out. That meant moving all my stuff down two doors to a room full of girls I only get along with marginally well directly after breakfast. Hooray. The professors were very apologetic about it, so I was mildly appeased at the time.

From there, we had the morning "free," provided we stuck to a list of approved activities. The group I was with - my old roommates, Sarah and Katie, a girl I like named Renee, plus a senior who studied abroad in St. Petersburg (Lauren), another senior named Becky, and her sophomore friends Nora and Julia. Two other girls were with us initially, but they were left behind when they stopped to buy umbrellas because it was raining. We never saw them again, although they were fine alone.

At the gaudy exterior of the Church of Christ the Savior on Spilled blood, we stopped for poncho purchases (to cover stray shoulders and hair) and tickets before heading in. It was beautiful, but everything about it threw me off just a little bit - the icon wall hiding the altar, the dark blue ceiling with golden suns instead of the smaller stars of Italy, the giant paintings of holy faces in the domes, the carvings of native semiprecious stones. Everything was mosaics, in layers and layers of arches, and I've never seen anything like it before.

Afterwards, we headed for a market recommended by both my guidebook and the ex-resident senior, but, alas, it had been closed. So instead we walked back up the canal and crossed the main street to the Kazan Cathedral, which, on the outside, reminded me of the plaza behind St. Peter's Basilica, but on the inside was much more like the Pantheon.

Both churches were operational, so I had to wear a headscarf. In Kazan Cathedral, noteworthy sites included a resident cat (not photo friendly - it stayed in its own little spot and didn't respond to calls) and two ceremonies, one of which seemed like a memorial/funeral in a side nave with two priests in black and lots of solo and group chanting. The other, on the steps of the main altar, involved a priest in red with a big hat (not sure what that means in Russia) and looked sort of like a wedding ceremony. Generally, it seems people walk into churches with a specific icon (holy painting) in mind, head straight for it, look at for a moment, and kiss its frame and cross themselves once or twice. Sometimes they also light incense. I can't stop thinking about germs.

From the Cathedral we separated (Sarah and I had tea together in a nearby cafe) and I looked for postcards in the gorgeous Singer Bookstore (they were so cheap!) before rejoining the group at the metro stop. Then we all headed together to the Moscovsky (transliterated) Station where we were to meet up with everyone else and visit a WWII monument. Most people were at museums all morning.

We got to the station promptly, and no one was there. This is where things started to go wrong. We should have stayed in one spot and waited for the professors (first rule of being lost), but the seniors, after ~15 minutes went by, became impatient with our inadequate leadership and wanted to find the monument themselves. This was the first of several times that we missed the group by minutes, if not less, and although the professors really should have been more timely,' a better strategy might have been to explore the other exits from the station.

Plaza outside the station where we waited

By this time it was really nice out, sunny and warm, so I was content to wander even though I thought it was a bad idea. But this was when the seniors began badmouthing the professors and complaining about how poorly organized and run the trip was. We went up and down the same street several times, asking strangers for help - there was supposed to be a McDonald's! - before picking a direction. The complaining slowly got worse and worse, until all half of the group would talk about was how much everything "sucked," and how they "paid a lot of money to be here;" one of my favorite lines was "It isn't even pretty." Actually, from this time on, they never stopped bashing the trip, from specific incidents of the last three days to the current issues. It was completely obnoxious, and I was not interested, because I was actually having a great time wandering in the sun.

We didn't find the memorial. We did find the Chesma Cathedral which was next on our schedule; I immediately thought of cake when I saw it.

The group sat and complained some more. One girl informed the rest of us that she was sending her mom an "angry email" asking her to call the school. Then what sounded like a 21-gun salute sounded across the street, behind some buildings, and the non-complainers jumped at an opportunity to explore some more and get away from the negativity. All we found was a university, and a nice man willing to put up with mediocre Russian to help us find our WWII monument, until the seniors got freaked out by his offer to show us the local church. One of them later mentioned she felt "unsafe."

Back at the candy-colored cathedral, anxious to get away from most of them, I headed inside to check out the icon collection. The similarities to and differences from all religious artwork I've ever encountered before were really interesting. The paintings of Madonna and Child were as ugly as ever (has anyone else ever noticed how ugly those are?) and a lot of the stories were easily identifiable. The pink-and-white walls, a slightly more detailed version of the exterior, were new, as were the robes worn in the icons - often fur-lined, with different patterns in the cloth - and the styles of the crowns.

The rest of the group eventually took action, borrowed a teenager's cell phone, and called Professor Helfant, "begging" him to come get us at the monument. Fortunately, I was paying attention and saw them leaving without me. I didn't want to walk with them anyway, so I deliberately sped up/slowed down to avoid the incessant whining. The "unsafe" girl sent her mom another email while we walked.

Back on the plaza we found Helfant and headed the opposite direction, seniors complaining all the while. After they had said enough and dropped back, I put in my two cents (that I hadn't been frightened, that we were never lost, and that I would prefer smaller group activities so long as we all got SIM cards for the iPads so we could email if we got really confused), and a couple of others backed me up, which was nice.

The WWII monument was big, plain, and educational on propaganda. Built by the Soviets to encourage the people, the stark memorial is not very popular, and the museum is small, utilitarian, and unconvincing. To be honest, I didn't care what the content was - I was just happy to have the space to escape the complainers. Good riddance, I had a good time.

The rest of the group was all there, so after a break, some catching up, brief geographical discussion, and a grocery store pit stop, we all headed back to the station to discuss our options for the evening. Between an organ performance, The Nutcracker, and Swan Lake, we chose the third option, and I got a front-row balcony level seat to see a my third ever full-length ballet. It wasn't especially high quality - the mainstage was across the street, and this was clearly a lesser company - but it was a lot of fun, especially since they gave the tragedy a happy ending after the second intermission. I also got to try roe for the first time: they were selling the red kind, on toast, at the concession stand. I liked it...tentatively. This sounds like an exaggeration, but it sort of freaked me out that the eggs popped in my mouth - it made me think about little baby fish for some reason. But the flavor was good, something to savor and take in small bites.

The ballet got out at 10:30 PM, so the sun had barely set. It was a long walk back to the metro station, but the seven of us who made it through the whole show hurried to get food. We settled on a nice restaurant focused on ethnic dishes just outside the metro stop, and I got myself a plate of "Melian" cheese. Mostly it was smoked or aged and acidic. Two types were cut in wedges, and two in bundles of strings, which was very strange. They only came with hazelenuts and grapes, but it was a meal-sized dish.

We barely caught the last train out of the station at midnight.

Jet Lagged and Closed Out

2014-05-21T14:59:00.001-07:00

Professor Graybill sent us all an email on Tuesday night informing us (oh joy!) that we could sleep in until 9 AM. Then she clarified that we had to be at a meeting place by 9 AM, which is not, by any college student's definition, sleeping in. I'm no longer miffed about it though; I only slept until 7:30 AM. It seems my body is not yet convinced that day is night (sunset at 10:40 isn't helping) and one of my roommates woke up once an hour all night and checked her phone to see if it was time to go yet. Normally, this wouldn't bother me, but last night...

So today was another day of jetlag. We discussed the readings, which apparently almost no one had done, over a surprise free breakfast of berry pies and homemade lemon cake (there were little bits of zest in it - delicious), which was far more than I expect of hospitality anywhere but the Midwest, never mind Russia. There also just happens to be exceptionally good free chai tea in the lobby, so I had a lovely time waking up.

Before we even left we took a pit stop, and some people in the group ran errands; I headed to the bank, only to discover I'm not allowed to withdraw more than 4,000 rubles ($115) at a time, even though my card limit is something like $5,000 and the conversion rate is 35 rubles/dollar. I also stopped in the grocery store in the tunnel and found a Lipton's iced green tea for the day for less than a dollar. Food in Russia is incredibly cheap!

Eventually, we made it onto the street, as a long stream of students and professors, and headed several long, muggy blocks down to the metro station. I have to say now that I don't think I like St. Petersburg. Something about the unity of design makes it feel fake, and the double-wide streets are too open, while the uniform building heights are too plain. The pollution also stripped the color away from the buildings (mostly ex-mansions in these pictures), so what once may have been beautiful is now mostly being used for commercialism. It's a strange city; finding monuments around corners is interesting, and I'm glad I'm visiting, but I'm also glad I'm not staying long.

I guess people actually aren't allowed to take pictures of the metro - something about security - so be glad I didn't get arrested on my first day out in Russia. There probably won't be any more metro photos.

The metro is incredibly deep. Parts of the system were bomb shelters in WWII, and I haven't yet been able to see to the bottom of an escalator from the top (although that's partly because of the crowds as well). This means it goes under the swamp St. Petersburg was built on, under the canals Peter himself built to make St. Petersburg an imitation western city, and under all infrastructure issues. It's also, weirdly, beautiful. Lots of the stations are finished with marble or granite; glass mosaics and impressive statues are frequent, and at least on station had purely ornamental stained glass windows. I don't know what difference between Russian and NY culture made this feasible in one location and unimaginable in the other, but it was really nice.

Riding the metro was a game of survival. The two professors (Jessica Graybill and Ian Helfant, who want us to call them by their first names) and two students know how to navigate well. The rest of us are pretty much infants. Even when I can sound out a station's name from the Cyrillic, the odds that I'll actually know what it means are zilch...and the professors are not babying us; nobody is waiting or checking for us, and the train doors are evil. In other words, if you miss the train, you're on your own. Needless to say, I've been sticking to people like lifevests. The metro is also very crowded at all times, so even buying a token (less than a dollar) is difficult, and twice I've had them rejected by the machine, which was embarrassing.

But I haven't been lost yet (knock on wood) and we all, slowly, made our way to our first stop of the day...St. Isaac's Basilica!

It was closed. Apparently that's a frequent problem here, although unlike in Italy, the problem isn't construction - it's just websites that aren't updated and irregular cleaning days. However, the dome was open, so we climbed the 200+ slippery, worn, stone steps up to some beautiful views, with plenty of cathedrals, churches, and even the occasional mosque visible in the distance.

It was nice up there. We talked geography for a bit and headed for the next stop on our itinerary - the Winter Palace and its accompanying square, obelisk, and triumphal arches (because one isn't enough), a walk through a park away.

On our way there, I bought bottled kvas, which is a Russian drink made with fermented yeast. It smells lemony, and tastes like liquid bread, if you can imagine that. It's strange, but not bad - there's a picture floating around of me trying it for the first time, because Graybill wanted to capture that magic moment on camera, and Helfant has some ritzy cameras.

Anyway. We didn't actually go into the Winter Palace, which was moderately disappointing, and I'm hoping to go back on the break day. Instead, we stood in the square, which is used solely by tourists; real Russians would only be in the square for a demonstration or a concert. This meant standing in the blazing sun for a long time while the whole group wandered, took pictures, and discussed geography (we really should have moved to the shade for that part).

At last, we headed through another park to our next stop - the Church of Christ the Savior on Spilled Blood: gaudy, but impressively so.

It was also closed.

The professors now gave up and let us go to lunch. I sat with Sarah while she sketched the cupola for a while, listening to two men playing a congo drum and something that looked like a giant misshapen zither. Then we headed off to look for a cafe recommended by the student on the trip who studied abroad in Russia. We popped into a couple of places, all of which ended up being cafeteria-style dining, apparently quite popular and reasonably priced. I nabbed a sandwich and cranberry juice for $6, although everything appears terrifyingly outrageous at first glance since that was a total of 200 rubles.

We explored across the street a little, Sarah sketched some more, and we met the group back at the correct corner at the appropriate time. Unfortunately, the professors weren't there. The two girls who came late (one missed her flight, one booked her flight incorrectly) showed up at the meeting spot and we all waited 15 minutes while the professors apparently were dealing with problems with the bill at the restaurant where they ate. Some of the students badmouthed them, and the trip, which was irritating.

When the professors arrived at last, it was back down into the depths of the metro and off to the St. Peter-Paul Fortress, on its own island, the name of which I will not try to transliterate from the Cyrillic. There was yet another park (all of these parks, by the way, had nice children's playgrounds, restrooms, newly planted flowers, statues, fountains, benches, and ice cream stands, and apparently Russian ice cream is very good). We crossed the bridge to the island, wandered the perfectly square streets, and found the Basilica, which was built to rival St. Peter's in Rome.

Suffice it to say, having just been in Rome, this was a slight disappointment. The "marble" was all cheaply painted clapboard, and the chandeliers were plastic. The icon wall, however, was from the 18th century and awesome. Apparently, in Russian Orthodoxy, practitioners don't get to see the priests, who carry out ceremonies behind the gold-plated, painted facade. Instead, they stand in solemn silence and priests occasionally bring out incense and waft it around, which sounds pretty boring to me. But the icon wall was beautiful to stare at for a little while.

From here, we headed to the local Prisoner's Museum, which was, as you may have guessed, a history of the prison, mostly with biographies of famous prisoners. Unfortunately, they were all pretty much the same - young rebels against the regime. Some of the prison cells were interesting, and they showed the updates through the ages (including eventual electricity), but I was so tired at that point that I fell asleep when I sat down for a minute.

Of course, there was still one last thing on the agenda: the Canal Tour, as in, by boat. St. Petersburg might be like Amsterdam - I wouldn't know - but the canals are exponentially wider and fewer than those in Venice. We hopped on a boat tour without a hitch and traversed around the main ones, with the English speaking guide pointing out all the different palaces and mansions of now-dead famous figures. I almost nodded off again at the end.

This shade of yellow is everywhere, by the way, and apparently is supposed to be code for "government building," although this particular house was known for its parties.

We had a short metro ride back to the hostel and I drank chai tea in the lobby and worked. The day starts at 9 AM again!

Long Day, Short Night

2014-05-20T14:09:00.002-07:00

Warning: this post is lengthy and almost completely inconsequential. Nothing happened, but I'm writing about it for the sake of getting in a good habit.

After a last-minute load of laundry at my Grandma and Grandpa's house, I got up early in the morning (8 AM), said goodbye to my Grandpa at the door, and headed for the Fitchburg airport bus with my Grandma (who also happened to be on her way to see my baby cousin Noah). It was an hour and a half away, but Spring had finally come to Massachusetts, so the view out the window was nice.

Grandma dropped me off right at 10:30, and I arrived at the airport promptly at 11 AM, with plenty of time until my 1:45 flight. Check-in did not go so well; the woman at the desk informed me that I wasn't checked in for my Aeroflot flight to Moscow because I hadn't gotten a seat assignment for my flight to JFK. But, on the plus side, my bags were checked all the way to Moscow!

Sitting at the gate made me nervous. The gate attendants, when they finally showed up, wouldn't tell me how passenger prioritization works or whether I had a chance of getting on the flight, so I sat and anxiously texted my Mom as they boarded groups. Finally, as the line dwindled, my name came up in green on the TV screen and my ticket was approved. I got an exit row seat and napped the whole way there.

JFK was much more stressful. When I arrived around 3, my flight wasn't on any of the screens yet, because it wasn't until 7:10. A Delta person told me to hop on a shuttle to Terminal 4; a guard manning the shuttle, indignant that I hadn't checked in and therefore didn't have a boarding pass yet, told me to turn around and walk out of security. The TSA guard at the security door told me to just keep walking straight, a gate agent told me to take a left, and outside, two baggage attendants told me I needed to be in the next building over.

Once I found the right building (international flights - much snazzier, lots of TV screens and boutiques), and the right line for Aeroflot check-in (with other students from my class behind me), I had to be redirected just to find the end of the line - that's how long it was.

This time, the woman at the check-in desk wanted me to know that I should have actually had my bags checked all the way to St. Petersburg, but of course, there was nothing that could be done now, and I would have to leave security, recheck my bag, get yet another boarding pass, and re-enter security at the gate in Moscow.

I made it through the massive security line (reading my guidebook the whole way), got something to drink, found my gate, plopped myself down, and read for two hours flat. Then I talked to my Mom one last time, texted with my brother Colin about his graduation (with honors!) and found the rest of the group. It's going to be weird not talking to any of my family for the next three weeks.

I had a middle seat (B - the layout was 3/4/3) but I actually liked the two girls I was with, Sarah and Katie, which was a small miracle.

I watched "Django Unchained," had dinner, got ready to go to sleep, and instead ended up in the back of the plane throwing up. No idea what that was all about; I flown my whole life and never had a problem before...and I had food poisoning just over a week ago. Needless to say, the Russian flight attendants, in their pristine all-orange uniforms (from the suits to the neckties and heels), were disgusted. And I was mortified. My seatmate, who was also back there, was a little worried.

Anyway, I eventually slept through breakfast (which I would not have eaten) and we landed in Moscow. One other girl had flown Delta to JFK and was in the same predicament I was, so the professors found us a personal valet (I have no idea what his actual title was, but this is an appropriate job description) who waited while we got our bags from the carousel, went to the bathroom, and changed, then brought us through security in no time. He was a really nice guy - tall, calm, spoke great English, and liked American action films.

Our next flight was delayed a little, so I had time to get some juice in a small convenience store/pharmacy and rehydrate. I started practicing my Cyrillic skills; I can't say Russian skills, because I know no grammar and only a few words, but I can sound things out. You can actually figure out a fair amount if you can figure out how to say a word out loud.

They gave us sandwiches on the plane, which I did not consume, and tea, which I did. I worked on the homework readings, which were dull, and my guidebook, which was not. When I finished the guidebook, I practiced sounding out words again, with an experienced Russian learner (another boy in the class) next to me helping out. Then, after only an hour flying, we arrived.

The St. Petersburg airport was nice. We sat and waited for bags for a while, with free wifi, and then headed to the curb.

It was unbelievably humid (think Florida), but very windy to counter the heat, and waiting for us was a privately chartered, air-conditioned bus, which I promptly fell asleep in.

I remember a little about the trip in - it was odd; there was lots of construction, everywhere, Soviet-era cement buildings (the earlier of which were surprisingly attractive), ex-apartment buildings converted to strip malls (yes, it was weird) and lovely parks popping up on the right all the time.

Our hostel is hidden behind a building and some gates, in a refurbished bread factory which also houses a bar, a modern art gallery, small restaurants, boutiques, a gift store, and little arts shops. Again, weird. It's part of a chain (Loft Project) and there are odd bits that are really nice - for example, the amount of space in the enormous lobby and the free wifi everywhere (although it's a bit dodgy at the moment).

It's definitely under construction, though, and in places the stairs and floors are so worn down you can see iron (framing?) through them. They took our passports for check in, but I ended up in a room with the two girls I like (Sarah and Katie) with a great view:

I showered quickly and found a group of people to go to the bank across the street which, miraculously, appears to have had no fees. I withdrew 4,000 rubles ($115) and helped almost everyone else in the group with the ATMs, which was fun. Then we re-crossed the street, which, since it's a main thruway, involves underground tunnels, complete with small supermarkets, convenience stores, and fast-food joints, and headed back to the hostel, where I had some of the best chai tea of my life in the lobby...free.I thought Trader Joe's was the best, but this stuff, in bags, was beyond good. I chatted about it with my two professors for a little while before they headed out for dinner, but when I tried to get back into my room, I couldn't work out the two-knob system, which I now know involves twisting a dial to the right while pulling the handle - complicated stuff for jet lag.

After checking out the stores and finding some of the group in the rooftop restaurant upstairs (swanky, I know), I got into the room and worked some more on the readings, emails, and this.

My night ended with a nice email from Colgate informing me that I have $1,000 more than I had thought in my bank account. The sun didn't set until well after 10:30 PM, which completely threw off my internal clock. but I'm tired now and my day tomorrow starts at 8:30 AM!

A Questionable Decision

2014-05-18T21:02:00.000-07:00

We’ll have to see if I can keep this up – I’m not sure whether this will be easier or harder than an email. But for now, in honor of the school that is sending me to Russia and thus inspired this blog…

I think I’m going to like being able to embed photos in my posts. That, at least, will be easier than emails.

Anyway. This is primarily a test post to see how things look. I’m pretty much all packed (by which I mean that I’m still hoping to weed some things out of the giant bag I have to lug across the ocean) and no doubt I will have even more time to post in the airport tomorrow during my NYC layover.

I probably should have started blogging long ago – it’s likely to be the only way to keep track of everything. But for now, hello, world!