Novgorod!

This was definitely the best weekend so far.  In fact, it was so good that it deserves two blog entries all to itself.  Things have really turned around and I'm starting to really enjoy my time here.  I trust that this will continue.  :]

Side note: this blog entry is going up much later than normal: on Monday we had an excursion directly after school and on Tuesday I got about halfway through writing the blog when the internet in the computer lab crashed.  Obviously I was not supposed to post this on time :P  Hopefully I can get it finished before it's time to write another one...

My weekend actually began on Friday evening, when we went out to dinner at the restaurand "The Idiot" with our beloved professor, Stas.  Because he is a Princeton professor (as he would probably say, "There is no rest for the weary") he actually has to work on professor-ish things during the summer, so he is only able to stay with us in St. Petersburg for one half of the program.  Which we are all incredibly sad about, because we all love Stas.  As much as I have already raved about him, not enough can be said about this professor.  He is so kind, and obviously actually cares about us: it's amazing.  The fact that we should all be so excited to go out to dinner with him on his last night in St. Petersburg should be proof.  In any case, the restaurant was very nice and we all enjoyed ourselves.  My only possible complaint was that it was a vegetarian restaurant, so I couldn't get any dishes with meat.  (I'm such a carnivore :])  However, I might not have gotten a meat dish anyway because it would have been fairly expensive, so I don't really mind.  I ended up ordering пирожки с картофелем (potato dumplings) with сметана, which is very similar to sour cream; and it was delicious.  It was a high-class restaurant: we were also given bread and several flavors of butter, as well as complimentary shots.  I gave mine to Anna P- and toasted Stas with my water bottle (which I had, of course, brought from my apartment.  Water isn't free in the restaurants here ;]).  It was, overall, a thoroughly enjoyable evening. :]]

The next day was our trip to Veliky Novgorod.  This is an ancient city in Russia, founded in 862 or so, and it is located about 167 km (103 miles) from St. Petersburg.  It is traditional in the Princeton-in-St-Petersburg program to take a day trip there between the two semesters of the program. Since it is a significant distance from the city and we only take a day trip, we had to get up pretty early: we met at 7:45 on the other side of the city.  Thank God for the metro :P  Regardless, we had to leave the apartment by 7:00 to get there on time, but I'm a morning person, so it wasn't a big deal.  In fact, I ended up doing what my mom always does: waking up ridiculously early the day of travel and not being able to go back to sleep.  The White Nights are still in full force here, although the sun gets closer to the horizon every day; so when I woke up I couldn't tell whether it was 3am or 7am.  As it turns out, it was 4:44.  :P  But, as I couldn't fall asleep again (and had to get up in an hour and 15 minutes anyway), I enjoyed a nice extended prayer time for all of my friends and family back home, especially for everyone at Living Waters, where I would normally be working in the summer.  I finally got up at 6, and we got ourselves breakfast (as usual, T.T. was at her dacha for the weekend) and packed lunches before heading out for our adventure.  We arrived just on time and no one was exceptionally late, so we were able to stay mostly on schedule.  We took a private bus to Novgorod (which conveniently happened to fit us all) and it took about 2.5 hours to get there.  I tried to catch some more shut-eye on the bus, but the atrocious road conditions and my seat in the far back made that rather difficult.  Unfortunately I had forgotten my hard ginger candies (which help alleviate motion sickness), or I would have read to pass the time.
We finally arrived at the city a little before 11 and waited around for about 15 minutes before our tour guide met us.  We went on a short bus tour of the city (it only took about 40 minutes to cover all of the interesting parts) before debusing (if you can deplane, you can debus ^.^) and exploring the крепость (fortress) and St. Sophia's Cathedral on foot.  The weather, as it was all last week, was gorgeous (чудесная in Russian - Tatyana was really impressed when she figured out that we knew that word, even though we learned it on about the third day of class here ;P) but almost too hot and we quickly tired of walking around.  It was really cool to see the inside of a working Orthodox cathedral, though: it is very dark inside because of the lack of windows and every surface, walls and ceiling, is covered with paintings of saints and biblical scenes.  Every Orthodox cathedral is split into three parts: the outer part, near the western-facing door, is for the women, children, and poor people (in olden times: now they can enter the main part of the church) and is supposed to represent hell: the scenes painted are often of torture and frightening things.  The main part of the cathedral is where the men gather to worship: it is representative of earth.  There are never pews or seats because in the Russian Orthodox tradition, suffering leads to salvation so it is better to stand.  The icons in the main part are mainly of saints, both traditional and local.  There are sometimes sarcophoguses (sarcophogi?) of famous or influential church leaders along the sides of the churches; I saw many people go up to these and kiss the top of them.  There are many candles lit around the room, which I am assuming serve a similar role as those in Catholic churches (if only I knew what that was, ignorant Protestant that I am ;]) but these provide the only additional light.  The final section of the cathedral, the "paradise," is separated from the rest by an iconostasis: a wall that reaches most of the way to the ceiling of the cathedral and is richly decorated with several rows of icons.  Only the priests are allowed behind it (although I have no idea what is back there: do Orthodox churches have altars??).  All in all, the cathedrals have a very solemn atmosphere, and I'm sure that the worshippers who come there are going through all of the rituals that they believe will lead to salvation; but it makes me glad that I know Jesus and that he isn't looking for me to do anything perfectly in order to earn my place in Heaven. 
After the tour of the fortress, we were all very hot and tired and hungry; good thing lunch was next on the itinerary.  We had a nice surprise at the cafe where we went for lunch: it was already paid for!  That was really great, and it ended up being a very nice three-course meal (Russians take food very seriously :]).  First was a salad that I wasn't very fond of because it contained atrocious amounts of tomatoes (I am not a tomato fan).  The next course was chicken noodle soup, (which surprised me that it wasn't something more Russian: they certainly have enough traditional soups...) followed by the main course of meat (I think it was either pork or lamb) and potatoes and coleslaw and peas.  We had both water and some really yummy (but ambiguous) fruit juice to drink.  
Then it was time to tour the monastary.  Since it was a working monastary, all of the women in our group were required to wear headscarves.  Latalia and I were able to borrow some from Tatyana: I got a giant pink polka-dotted silk scarf and Latalia received a somewhat more moderately-sized floral print one.  It was pretty awkward trying to figure out how to put it on, but apparently Russian Orthodox isn't nearly as strict as Islam; the head only had to be covered symbolically, it wasn't like we had to hide all of our hair or anything.  We saw inside yet another orthodox cathedral, but overall didn't stay at the monastary for very long.  Our next stop was a much more interesting one: we went to a Museum of Wooden Architecture.  It was a collection of wooden buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries which had been turned into museum pieces and filled with artifacts from the time period.  We saw inside the houses of a typical middle-class family, a typical poor family, and a working-class family.  We also saw some really amazing wooden chapels and cathedrals, decorated every bit as extravagantly as St. Basil's in Moscow or Church of the Spilled Blood here in St. Pete.  I got some great pictures there (although I was informed that I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside the buildings a little after the fact - whoops!).  There was a great little souvenir market right outside the museum where I bought various souvenirs because they weren't too expensive there.  I'm kind of dreading the souvenir shops in St. Pete - the prices are notoriously exorbitant.  Let's just say, some of you may be receiving more "unconventional" souvenirs :]]
After the museum, we headed back to St. Petersburg.  It was unbelievably hot in the bus: the American Northeast isn't the only place that's had a heat wave this last week.  (Monday got above 100 degrees Farenheit, which is exceptionally unusual for Russia's Northern Capital)  Thanks to our crazy driver, we made it home in just over 2 hours (although at some points I think I would have rather been traveling more safely and less quickly!)  It was another hour before Latalia and I reached home again, so we finally got to the apartment at 8:30.  Since lunch had been paid for, we were able to eat the food T.T. packed us for our supper (sandwiches and yogurt).  I took a shower just to cool off before spending the evening studying (okay, we haven't even started the second semester and we have homework? Leave it to Princeton... :P) before hitting the sack at 11:30, more than ready for a good night's sleep.  


As usual, I didn't wear any sunscreen on Saturday (I don't believe in it) and I wore a tank top since it was so hot.  However, the sun here so far north isn't quite as strong as it is elsewhere, so I ended up getting a nice tan without burning.  So there.  :]]