Thank God for Peanut Butter

Well, since I realize that my blog is starting to sound more like a chronicle or a detailed police report than an interesting story, I'll try to only hit the highlights of last week.

• I went to the store on Monday, spent 214 rubles and got food for the entire week.  Not the most appetizing fare, but certainly cause for celebration: nowhere else could I spend $6 and feed myself for 5 days (granted, it's really only 5 meals, but the point still holds).  This is good, since I am still thinking about all of the money that I lost when my purse was stolen (in bills as well as goods), and the time is drawing near to venture out into the wild jungles of the souvenir fair, where every vendor waits to pounce on you and lure you in to paying at least twice as much as what everything is worth.  I'm not entirely sure that I'm ready. :P
• Last week I was very busy after school.  Monday I met Ksyusha, Tuesday I went to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery,  Wednesday I blogged (and that was an adventure in itself), Thursday we went to the Russian Museum, and Friday I once again spent time with Ksyusha.  Somewhere in all of that I still managed to do my homework either on time or early and get a full night's sleep every night.  Can it be that I've really figured out how to study and have a social life simultaneously?  Or is this just an illusion, enabled by the fact that I'm only studying one subject and therefore have 20 instead of 24 hours of class each week? (Wow, I actually didn't realize that it was that much... my schedule last semester seemed like a lot, and yet 4 hours per day doesn't??  Guess I'm back in High School mode here...)
• After school on Monday, Ksyusha and I went to Михайлевский замок (Michael's Castle), which is now a branch of the Russian Art Museum.  There were some very recent works there, painted in the last few years, that especially caught my eye.  I also noticed that the interiors of this building aren't nearly as extravagant as many of the palaces that I have seen here (although, of course, not much can compare to the Hermitage...)  On the way back, I got it into my head to ride a tram, and waited by the stop for about 20 minutes before I gave it up as a lost cause and walked home (I should have learned my lesson from the day before...)
• After supper on Monday, Tatyana and I had a good long talk on two of her favorite subjects: religion and boys.  Fortunately I've become fairly well-versed in the vocabulary necessary to discuss these themes, so it was fairly interesting for the both of us.  In the seven weeks that I've been here, I have at least learned how to express my opinions even when I lack the particular vocabulary (one of the most necessary skills in any language XD).  I'm still not sure whether she's entirely clear on my plans for after the program, particularly when I will be returning to St. Petersburg from Moscow to catch my ridiculously early flight out on the 4th.  But, we still have time to work that out (and to tell the truth, I'm not really sure I'm entirely clear on my plans :P).
• The days were a bit cooler last week, at least at the beginning - that was a welcome relief.  It's such a nuisance to have to shower in the evenings, because then I have to either dry my hair manually (and my hair dryer is the only appliance that I brought with me that doesn't work very well over here) or wait for it to air dry - and with my hair, that takes hours.  The other option, going to bed with wet hair, has led to some dire consequences in the past.  So I was very glad when it had finally cooled down enough to justify taking showers in the mornings again.
• On Tuesday Anna B took a few of us who expressed interest on an expedition to Alexander Nevsky Monastery.  This is the Nevsky for whom Nevsky Prospect, the Nevsky Institute, and sundry other buildings and sights around the city are named.  We went inside the cathedral, and I noticed that there were many fewer murals on the walls than in St. Sophia's cathedral in Novgorod - perhaps because it isn't as old.  We also ate pirojki in a cafe downstairs, but the real attraction to the Monastery is the cemetery.  The Necropolis is the final resting place of some of the most famous Russians of all time, including Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky.  Their gravestones are unbelievably extravagant, as you can imagine; complete with sculptures of the artists and excerpts from their most famous works.  But, it's still a graveyard; they're still dead; by now, they look just like every other person that died more than 50 years ago; and someday, you and I will look like that, too.  Okay, maybe that's a little too morbid.  But it is interesting how much attention we pay to those who are now no more than worm food, all because of what they did during their several dozen years on earth.  After all, you only go around once...
• Also on Tuesday, one of the administrators of the Nevsky Institute who had heard of my plight brought in her old digital camera for me to use.  It takes a rechargeable battery pack and a Memory Stick instead of an SD card, and the last pictures on the Memory Stick are from 2008, so I know the camera is fairly old.  But it is a digital camera, so at least I can have pictures from my last two weeks here; and it is a Canon PowerShot, 7.2 megapixel - a pretty good camera.  The only complication is going to be getting my pictures off of it before I have to return it (which, incidentally, is before I go to Moscow, so it doesn't solve that problem :P).  But I trust that it will work out, in the end.
• The food this week, at least, got a little more interesting than it has tended to be.  Olga came and made us pelmeni on Tuesday (which is now officially my favorite Russian dish.  I'm a big fan of stuffed pasta from any part of the world - ravioli from Italy, pirogies from Poland, dim sum from China... :])  And then on Wednesday morning, she cooked us French Toast!!  (It has a name in Russian, but I forget it.)  It was really good - better than when I had it in Belgrade - and tasted much the same as in America, undoubtedly because it was made the same way. :P  I also got Latalia's permission to make a peanut butter sandwich with some of her peanut butter which her mother sent her (since she won't be able to eat it all by the time she leaves), so Wednesday was a very good food day.  I didn't realize how much I enjoyed American food before I had to go without it for a few weeks.  I especially miss breakfast foods - the Russian idea of breakfast is oatmeal and tea :P.  I want pancakes, French toast, waffles with peanut butter and Mom's pineapple-rhubarb jam, omelets, muffins, bacon, and especially fruit.  We have cornflakes every morning - it's something, and I do like cereal, but breakfast is my favorite meal and I love to eat hearty in the mornings.  But, now I'm making myself hungry just talking about this, so I'd better stop. :P
• I had thought that the mosquitoes were done with - turns out I was wrong.  On Wednesday night the biggest mosquito I have ever seen buzzed around my room ceaselessly all night.  Every time I woke up - and I woke up often - I could hear the hellish whine, which sounded like it was right above my head, but if I got up and turned the light on, I could see that the creature was, in fact, on the opposite side of the room (if that tells you anything about how big the thing was :P).  I never did end up killing it, even after getting up at 6:30 and chasing it around the room for 30 minutes.  I left my door open when I went to school, and I can only assume that it flew out, seeking fresh blood or better territory or something.  I can only hope that it doesn't breed in our house - more of those mutant mosquitoes and I can forget about sleeping again while I'm here. :P
• As I said, on Thursday we went to the Russian museum after school, with the entire group.  Incidentally, this was our last group outing (and I was none too sad about that :P).  We had an excellent guide, however (the same guide as conducted our bus tour of the city upon our first arrival in the city) who spoke very good English and moved at a good pace through the museum, telling us interesting things about the artists and their works so that none of us were ever very bored.  I pride myself on the endurance I have built up over the summer as far as walking goes - good thing, too, since I'll be an OA leader in September and that will be my sole occupation for an entire week.  In the interest of this, I decided to walk to our meeting place, although I would barely have enough time.  Yet I managed to not only make it in time, but arrive almost first (as I later learned, this is because several of the group stopped for drinks and snacks and their orders were slower in coming than they expected).  Afterwards, I walked back to the apartment and began to inquire about souvenir prices, so that I didn't get roped into buying the first pretty matroshka doll that I came across for twice its value.  I found some beautiful paintings of sights in St. Petersburg for my artist Aunt Shirley, and made note of the vendor's location to return when I had more money.  There are also many artists who are willing to draw a portrait of you for the right price - namely, 500 rubles.  I'm still not sure whether I can justify spending that kind of money (~$17) on a picture of myself.
• Friday was without a doubt the highlight of my week.  Class was ridiculous - for whatever reason, my classmates (especially Phil) were in a particularly silly mood, and kept answering questions with lines from the poems that we had memorized.  They were impressively creative with how they managed to incorporate the depressing sentiments of Lermontov's 19th-century poetry into exercises about verbs of motion and subordinate clauses.  And that was only grammar class - in conversation, things deteriorated even further.  All summer, we have had assignments called "Creative task: Let's think about it... in Russian."  This means that we are given a theme and have to come up with a several-sentence story that we tell aloud on that particular theme.  At first, these were short and stumbling and we took them very seriously, usually writing down what we wanted to say and either memorizing it or reading straight from the paper.  Then we got completely bored of it and it became a real drag.  Then one day someone realized that instead of laboring to come up with a story, we could take movie plots and retell them, adapting them to the necessary subject: our teacher, a native St. Petersburger who speaks little English, would not be likely to know many American movies.  Suddenly, the boring and pointless exercise turned into a game: to see who could guess the movie first, without letting the teacher know what we were doing.  Our stories also had to be believable, because if she caught on that it was a movie, our cover would be blown.  The theme was vacation/holiday: Emily told about one time when she was in Australia and was temporarily kidnapped and taken to Sydney (Finding Nemo - no one guessed that one :P).  Hayk recounted the time when he skipped school his senior year and went joyriding in his friend's father's Ferrari (Ferris Beuler's Day Off).  Phil explained that there was a village in America where everyone thought that it was still the 19th century, through the cunning of the city fathers (The Village).  Mattias explained the history of Boxing Day - that one time there was a champion boxer, but she suffered head trauma in a fight and her trainer helped her commit suicide so that she wouldn't have to live connected to a ventilator (Million-Dollar Baby).  It was a hoot - we were all excited for Tuesday, since we had connived the theme to be "visiting strange relatives".  Conversation is now our favorite class.
• After class on Friday, I met Ksyusha near Peter and Paul's Fortress, and we went to see the products of the Annual Sand Sculpture Competition, held there on the beach of Hare Island.  The theme this year was "Film" - there was even a sculpture dedicated to Lord of the Rings!!  I got a picture by that one (although I took pictures of all of them).  It was absolutely incredible that the stuff that we were walking on was also the medium out of which these artists had crafted the masterworks that we saw in front of us.  However, it didn't take long to look at the dozen or so sculptures, so we decided to take a detour into the interior of the cathedral in the fortress before our next activity.  In this cathedral are buried all but two of the Russian Czars (the other two are buried in Moscow), a testament to the fact that, for most of the city's history, St. Petersburg has been the capital of Russia.  This cathedral is much more western than most in St. Petersburg - the large windows let in more light and the long, thin spire is definitely not Russian.  I saw there (yet another) bust of Peter the Great as well as the graves of Catherine II, Elizabeth I, and the family of Nicholas II who were kidnapped and shot in a backwater village after the Revolution.  But these only half held my attention, as I was really looking forward to where we were to visit next - the ZOO!!!!
• I love zoos.  Actually, I'm more like a 7-year-old in my interests: you can have your art, history, and theater; just give me animals, a beach, or a playground.  But I probably have more fun, so it's okay :D  I had been wanting to visit the St. Petersburg Zoo all summer, but my (liberal, tree-hugging) friends continually warned me that the conditions would be atrocious and the animals would be mistreated and hungry, and that I shouldn't go (or at least shouldn't expect much when I did).  Then, when I lost my camera, I wanted to wait until I got another before I went, so that I could take pictures, which is my favorite thing to do at the zoo.  So finally the opportunity presented itself (Ksyusha was more than happy to accompany me to the zoo), and we spent an entire afternoon gawking at all of the wild animals and trying to make sure that we didn't miss anything.  We saw a snake in the process of shedding its skin, and watched it until it had finished.  We visited the Spider Room (eek!!), complete with dirt on the floor, sticks and leaves surrounding the terrariums, and a rope spiderweb on the ceiling from which hung the shed skins of all of the tarantulas.  When I first came in and nearly ran into one of these grisly carcasses, it was all I could do to keep myself from screaming.  Good thing I like being scared... :]  In the arena, where there is usually the opportunity to ride horses, there was a fine trotter and a shaggy pony being lunged (for those of you who aren't horsemen and women, that means that they were going around in a circle while the person stood in the middle on the other end of a long canvas rope and directed them.  The trotter was being trained to pick up its legs more when it trotted, so that it would be more of a floaty gait.  The pony was just being exercised.  Of course, I was probably more interested in this than in any of the other animals in the zoo... go figure. :P  But we also saw lions, and tigers, and bears (oh my! - sorry, couldn't resist XD), and leopards (snow, black, and normal), and tons of predatory birds, and hares, which are much larger than rabbits, and Prezhwalski's horses (that's spelled wrong, but I don't really care - they're the only true species of wild horse still in existence, and they live in Mongolia), and mountain goats, and a very active tapir, and reindeer, and moose!!  It was really cool - there were definitely some animals there that I've never seen before so closely.  Like the polar bears, or the hares, or the reindeer.  There was also a petting zoo where you could feed goats (which we, of course, did) and a frog house, which we also visited.  There was a series of rooms in the middle of this building which you could enter, and when we did we discovered that they were actually animal cages that were designed to let the zoo visitors get up close and personal with the animals.  It wasn't anything dangerous - just a couple of fish, some turtles, and a two-toed sloth who glanced blearily around at us before going back to his nap.  But it was definitely something you wouldn't have the chance to do in America - you know, animal rights activists and whatnot.  Something else we saw that I don't think you would in America was the animals being fed.  That's not so strange, but instead of pre-prepared vitamin-packed food mush, there were actual, dead, bloody prey animals.  The ferrets and meerkats and eagles got mice, while the big cats and bears were fed chickens.  The zookeepers weren't worried that the zoo-goers might be squeamish or anything - I guess they figured that if people wanted to see the animals, they might as well see them as they would be in the wild.  I won't gross you out with vivid descriptions of how we could hear the meerkats crunching the bones of the mice or anything... but it was pretty cool.  And, contrary to all of my friends' fears, the animals all seemed well-fed, happy, and as active as they can be expected to be in the terrible 90-degree heat.  Many of them were trying desperately to cool off, whether lying on the cool cement floor or panting (especially the cold-climate creatures like the polar bears and mountain goats), and I felt bad for them then, but this is quite unusual heat and there is really nothing the zookeepers could have done about the weather.  

So, we are finally nearing the end of this series of my adventures.  As you probably know, I will be in Moscow for the weekend after the end of the program, and there I will most likely not have the luxury of a computer.  Thus, I will try my hardest to catch up on my blog before I depart Friday evening, but there will be a lull (although not more than there already has been, at times) followed by a furious spurt of several entries within a short time span, once I return to the States.  Thus, I advise you to catch up now so that you don't get overwhelmed (although, when I think about it, if you're reading this you're basically caught up, and if you're not you wouldn't be reading this, so it won't help you - oh well! :P)  As always, twewthfully yours!!!