Emilia

Needless to say, I didn't sleep nearly as well in St. Petersburg as I had in Belgrade.  I was tired enough, certainly, but I'm very sensitive to light and so the fact that my room never got dark made it difficult for me to get a good night's sleep.  I would wake up, see how light it was, and think, "Oh, well, it must be morning."  I would then check my watch to find that it was, indeed, morning... 4am.  And so it went.  It probably didn't help that my bed consisted of a couch with a blanket and a sheet on it.  The couch actually does fold out into a double bed (the cushions are on wheels and the back of the couch folds down), but since I'm just one person T.T. just moves the decorative pillows and lays a sheet down for me to sleep on.  The good thing about it being a foldout couch, at least, is that I can store my bedding and pajamas inside the couch during the day. 
I finally decided to get up at 8:15, although I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do until T.T. got up and made me breakfast.  I had assured her the night before that part of the reason for my pathetic Russian was that I was so tired from traveling (which I only half-believed, myself).  So, after putting away my bedding and readying myself for the day, I set out to better explore my room.  I was particularly intrigued by the bookshelf, which I found mostly taken up by the myriad volumes of "The Official Soviet Encyclopedia", in Russian.  As far as I can tell, there are at least 40 volumes, but they are all out of order (my OCD tendencies compel me to rearrange them.  Thus far, I've been able to resist, but there's no telling how long that will last...)  There was also a Russian dictionary of several more volumes, but what really caught my eye were the books on the topmost shelf.  There were many Russian novels, some of which I recognized (including "Fathers and Sons" by Ivan Turgenev and a couple of Tolstoy novels).  But what really caught my attention is when I noticed a couple of titles in English.  I looked again: there was "English Grammar for Students of Russian", "501 Russian Verbs", and a good-sized English-Russian dictionary.  I was so shocked and pleased that I literally fell to my knees, thanking the Lord for this find.  Perhaps there was hope after all!  I am convinced that these reference books will prove invaluable to my ability to communicate with T.T. (as they already have several times).  It's amazing how much I am still surprised when the Lord answers my prayers, even though He does it so often.  The night before, my situation had weighed heavily upon me: I could barely communicate with the only other person in the house, and things didn't look much better for Latalia.  I was even beginning to doubt myself: why had I thought that I could handle coming to a new country and immersing myself after only a year of study?  Why hadn't I just waited until I knew more?  But with the new day (I can't say sunrise, since it didn't set, but the metaphor still works) came new hope.  I was determined to try my best, even if that meant looking up every other word and communicating mostly by gesture. 
I was, once again, very glad that I had made my visit to Serbia before coming here.  Many of the little things were the same - the light switches, the doors, the toilet (in T.T.'s apartment it is almost exactly like an American toilet, except the button to flush is on the top of the tank and the water level in the bowl is extremely low - sorry if it's vulgar to talk about, but I thought it was interesting), the windows.  The windows are actually very interesting.  Instead of sliding open upwards, as most do in America, they consist of two vertical panes, one of which has a handle on it.  If the handle is horizontal, it unlocks the window and one panel is free to swing open (the other panel doesn't move).  If it points down, the window is locked.  But if it points upwards, the window tilts open from the bottom, creating an openin of about 6 inches at the top.  I think this is an ingenious way to open the window just a little bit, to let some air in without opening it all the way.  Nikola's door out on to his balcony also worked in the same manner. I smiled every time I found such a similarity - it wasn't so strange to me this time around.  It was also interesting to note that some of the things which I found so strange in Serbia (like the doors and windows) were characteristic of Europe, not just Belgrade. 
T.T. finally got up at 10, by which time I had begun my long list of vocabulary I thought I would need, as well as looking through my textbook for the summer.  Breakfast consisted of cornflakes and toasted sandwiches (buterbrodi) with, once again, tea.  I was pleasantly surprised, although T.T. had asked me the night before what I usually ate for breakfast as well as my typical schedule of when I went to bed, got up, ate breakfast, etc.  (Side note: she also thought my schedule of going to bed at 10 or 11 and getting up at 7 or 8 was quite odd.  She seemed to think that was for small children.  For the record, I explained that my entire family followed this schedule, and I still firmly believe that it makes sense.  Get up when the sun does, and go to bed once it's dark.  Of course, if your city gets 20 hours of light in the summer and 4 in the winter, that might not be practical :]).  I choked down the green tea once again, but resolved to find and purchase some fruit or peppermint tea as soon as possible - something that I would find more palatable. 
In broken Russian, I managed to convey to T.T. that I needed to go out and meet a friend of mine, who would give me a cell phone.  One of the graduate students with the Princeton in Petersburg program had bought cell phones and SIM cards for whoever needed them, and we had arranged to meet in the city center at 12:30 so that I could have it as soon as possible.  I don't know how much she actually understood what I was going to do, but she knew that I would leave at 11:00 and try to be back by 1:30, since Latalia was supposed to arrive around that time.  So that I could get back into the apartment, she gave me a set of keys and showed me how to use them - it's quite a process.  There is one key for each of the double doors into the apartment itself (the one for the inside door is like nothing I had ever seen before Belgrade - it resembles the medieval skeleton keys, with a long,  narrow shaft and some strange shapes at the end), and a magnetic key that unlocks the keypad on the outside door.  Once T.T. was satisfied that I would be able to regain entry to the apartment, I set off on my first big adventure in St. Petersburg.
The place where we were meeting to exchange phones was just outside the metro stop at the very center of the city.  Not being especially streetwise (and more importantly, having no Russian currency on me), I was loathe to attempt the metro, so I decided to walk.  I hoped this would accomplish several things: it would allow me to explore the neighborhood a bit, get me some exercise, and I hoped to also find a place to exchange my currency and buy some shampoo and conditioner (apparently conditioner isn't big in Europe yet because the Stojanovics didn't have any, much to the dismay of my frizz-prone hair).  I pride myself on being relatively good with maps, as well as having an excellent memory for places and a pretty decent sense of direction.  So I was actually much more comfortable walking the 3 or 4 miles to the meeting place rather than attempting to ride the metro, though it was only one stop.  I carefully inspected my route on the map, memorized the turns I would have to make, and set out. 
It was a pleasant day, although quite windy, and I was glad for my cardigan.  I walked across multiple bridges and tried to take in the sights as much as possible while still making decent time.  I found Nevsky Prospect (the main street of the city) with relatively little trouble and soon located the meeting-place.  I had, for once, left myself adequate time to get there, so I still had around 45 minutes before I had to meet Anna.  On my way, I had been watching for places to exchange money, and had taken note of the one with the best rate.  So I backtracked a bit and, after hesitating outside for a moment or two, entered the office.  I was (fortunately) able to exchange my money without saying anything, and the woman who made the transaction didn't even ask for my passport, as I had been warned she might (I was glad, because it was under my clothing and would have been difficult to extract).  The exchange rate was 30.95 rubles to the dollar, so I ended up with something more than 4500 rubles, which I promptly stowed in several places on my person before leaving the exchange office (I knew to do that much, at least).  My next task was to find shampoo and conditioner, which I soon did at a large apteka (pharmacy).  None of the merchandise was out on shelves, accessible to the customers - it was all behind glass windows, and you went up to a cashier and indicated what you wanted.  They then retrieved it for you and you paid for it.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to pronounce the name of the product that I wanted, but when the cashier saw that I spoke very little Russian, she indicated for me to point to what I wanted (I knew enough at least to be able to tell her the color of the bottle and indicate when she had selected the correct one).  I bought Herbal Essences shampoo and conditioner for a total of 255 rubles (about $8, but at least I knew what I was buying).  All of the writing on the bottles was in Cyrillic, not English, so I had to spend several minutes staring up at the different shampoos and looking up the words on the bottle before I could even determine which kind I wanted to buy :P
These two adventures took the entire 45 minutes, so after successfully procuring my hair care products I headed back to the meeting place, where I found Anna and several of the other students in the program who had also ordered phones.  I was so excited to see native English speakers again that I couldn't stop chattering (which I'm sure you can't possibly imagine for me :]])  (It had occurred to me, the day previous, that before meeting the other members of my group in the airport I hadn't spoken to a native English speaker for five days, which was definitely a new experience for me [I don't consider Nikola to be a native English speaker, although he may tell you otherwise].  Exciting, and a little bit disconcerting).  We went to a nearby park to make the transaction and activate the phones so we wouldn't be in the way, and for the second time in my life I fought with new technology, and lost.  (Give me a laptop and I'll figure it out in a day.  Give me a phone, and it'll take me at least a week to figure out how to add people to my address book :P).  Then, it was time to hurry back to T.T.'s apartment in anticipation of Latalia's impending arrival.  I took a slightly different way back, because it seemed to be shorter, and by walking quickly I was able to get there in only 30 minutes.  I timed it well, for I had been back at the apartment for no more than 10 minutes when T.T.'s phone rang and she called, "Emilia!  Latalia!!"  and we rushed down to the street to greet her.
Perhaps I should pause here to explain.  Somehow, in all of the introductions, my name came across to T.T. as Emilia instead of Erin.  This, of course, would make more sense to a Russian speaker who is accustomed to feminine names that end in either an a or ya/ia. (Natalia, Aleksandra, Victoria...)  Erin, being a name of Irish origin, seems like it should be masculine (and is, in fact, indeclinable in Russian, which means that it never changes regardless of its function in the sentence.  Normal, Russian names change their ending based on what part of speech they function as).  However, I certainly didn't feel confident enough with my Russian to be able to inform her of her mistake, and, after all, she had the correct beginning sound...  Actually, I'm quite used to being called Emily, since that's my sister's name and even my parents can't always keep us straight.  Especially at church, since Emily attends the school associated with it and I had always attended public school, I was ofted addressed as Emily by the pastors and elders.  Even my friends do it sometimes - apparently, I just look like an Emily.  So when T.T. decided that my name was Emilia, I decided to let it be.  (I do think it is a quite pretty name and I've always been a bit disappointed that I've never landed a nickname.  Unless you count Justin Patterson, who in elementary school used to call me E, or Erminkapinka, or Ernesty Milko, or whatever struck his fancy at the moment.)
Fortunately for me (and unfortunately for T.T.), we soon found out that Latalia didn't know Russian any better than I do (and she is also a naturally quieter person than I am).  T.T. showed Latalia to her room, another long and empty space that I hadn't noticed before.  She also had a couch, and a shkaf, and a desk - with a computer sitting on it!  When I pointed this out, T.T. told us that it doesn't work (which is why I'm blogging from here at the Nevsky Institute, and why I'm so behind - I can only work on it after school).  Latalia began unpacking and I went back to my room until lunch, which happened around 2:30.  Today it consisted of pirojki (meat-filled dumplings), which is a much more traditionally Russian food than either pasta or cold cereal :]  Latalia was extremely tired and understood very few of T.T.'s questions, just as I had been the day before.  Fortunately she asked many of the same questions of Latalia that she had asked me, so I was able to translate for Latalia and help her with her answers.  (As you can tell, I'm already regaining my confidence - but I'll try not to let my ego get overinflated this time.)  Late in the afternoon, T.T.'s daughter came over, and she speaks English fairly well, and understands even better.  Nonetheless, I tried to speak Russian to her as much as possible and only asked for English when I encountered too many words I didn't know.  She was also interested in getting to know us (where we were from, where we study, how old we are, our families, etc) and especially in my time in Serbia.  I showed her my pictures, at which point T.T. came over and once again exclaimed over how much Nikola and I look alike.  Jenya (T.T.'s daughter, short for Yevgenia) told me that she didn't really see the resemblance, and I was glad.  Jenya was, however, surprised whenever I told her the ages of the people in the pictures - she thought Nikola looked much older than 19 and couldn't believe it when I told her that Aca was only 15.  I guess they grow up fast in Serbia? XD
Supper that night was lentil soup, and Jenya explained that they eat lentils very often, although it's not very popular across Russia.  They're too closely related to beans for me, and I somewhat explained that to Jenya with the help of quite a few English words.  After supper T.T. got out the syrup (real, Maine maple syrup) that I had brought her as a housewarming present, which reminded Latalia who brought out some black raspberry jam that her aunt had made.  I tried to explain that in America we generally put maple syrup on pancakes or french toast or waffles, but T.T. and Jenya preferred to eat it by the spoonful with tea.  T.T. kept remarking on how much it tasted like sugar or honey, and I tried to explain that it basically was sugar, taken from trees.  I'm not sure how much of it I got across.  :P
Latalia did well to stay up until 9:30, at which point I was also ready for bed.  I tried to compensate for the brightness of the room by screwing my eyes tightly shut and burying my face in the pillow, but it was somewhat of a lost cause.  Latalia, thinking ahead, had brought a sleep mask and I dearly wished I had one.  Oh, well, I'll have to either get used to this or find some way to block out the light.  Hmm... sounds like a job for an engineer!! :D