- My parents finally got through to me on the phone on Monday, and we talked for about 15 minutes before our call got suddenly cut off. I still don't know why, but Mom told me that she had to try several times with the same number before actually getting through, so I suppose our connection was just lost. After all, it was a cell-to-cell connection over a distance of about 8000 miles, so I guess it's not all that surprising. But it was good to talk to Dad, at least. They haven't tried again as far as I know.
- The weather was mostly rainy and cool all week, which kind of set the mood, unfortunately. On Monday evening we had a kind of buckwheat porridge for dinner, and afterwards I felt very sick to my stomach. But I had some Pepto-Bismol with me, so I took that and it soon put me right again. However, we were unfortunately also served it the next night. I (for obvious reasons) refused to eat it, but somehow the reason for my refusal was not properly communicated to my host mother. I don't know whether she thought that I really didn't like it, or was just being obstinate, or what; but apparently the fact that I wouldn't eat it the second time rather offended her. She was very cool to us the rest of the evening and on Wednesday morning wouldn't even talk to us, other than to tell us that breakfast was ready (although we have cereal, bread and yogurt every morning, she insists on preparing it for us). As I could tell that I had deeply offended her, I was rather upset for the rest of the day; this was the day that I also began severely missing my friends - I'm not sure how much this was connected with my host mother's behavior. Everyone else in the group (or so it at least seemed) hung out after school: exploring the city, attending ballets and operas, watching the World Cup, etc. Latalia and I don't really live close to any of the other members of our group, and since neither of us have spent very much time in big cities, we are rather timid about venutring out and about by ourselves. Thus we haven't really done any exploring thus far, and the grueling routine of class 9-2 and studying afterwards until supper, and then again from suppertime until bed, was beginning to tell on me. It wasn't that I didn't want to do anything else: we live close to the zoo, which is situated in a beautiful park, and I also know that there is a very famous and extensive zoological museum nearby that I am very interested in visiting. However, I was feeling very left out since none of the other members of the group ever invited me to go along with them, and I felt that the things that I was interested in weren't "high culture" enough for the others to enjoy. I missed my crazy friends from back home: Jennifer, Carmella, Brooke, Alek & Emily... the people with whom I knew I could have fun no matter what we were doing; the ones who had the proper sense of humor to enjoy things like pickled fetuses or a circus. :] To make matters worse, my depressed mood (so I'm convinced) lowered my immunological (is that the word?) defenses, and I woke up Thursday morning with a horrible sore throat. I still went to class (what else could I do?) but I felt worse and worse throughout the day and I could hardly walk by the time school ended at 2:00. Fortunately, an afternoon of laying low, a good night's sleep and a healthy dose of ibuprofen and tylenol seems to have cured most of my ills: today I'm a bit stuffed up but nothing else. I'm also happy to report that my mood has lifted exceedingly: I bounded out of bed this morning with an inexplicable smile on my face, ready to face the glorious day (this is the nicest day we've had all week, sunny and clear and in the high 60s); i.e., back to my normal self. To quote Emily Irvine, "You could cheer up a rock if it was having a bad day, so I'm sure you'll be fine." I leave it to your judgement whether my infectious personality actually goes that far...
- Also, Latalia and I spoke to Stas about the situation with T.T. and he asked someone from the institute to call and explain why I had refused to eat the porridge the second time, as well as tactfully try to suggest that we should be eating supper closer to 6 than 8 (since lunch at the institute is served at 11, we are both starving by supper every day, which circumstance could very well have contributed to my averse reaction to the porridge). Now Latalia and I are on much better terms with T.T., and it's a good thing, too: she's the only Russian aside from our teachers who will go to the effort to communicate with us in Russian. It isn't worth it for Latalia and I to try to converse together in Russian, since we're on the same (extremely basic) level, and I have yet to hang out with my Russian Friend (that comes this weekend). T.T. always seems interested in hearing how the other members of the group are doing, as well as our other friends (i.e. Nikola, whom she mistakenly called "твой boyfriend" once before I vehemently corrected her, asserting "у меня нет boyfriend-а" (I don't have a boyfriend) - that led to a rather entertaining conversation ;])
- This week was also a week of firsts for Latalia and I. On Wednesday afternoon we decided to try to visit the Zoological Museum, only to find when we arrived there (on foot - we still basically walk everywhere, regardless of distance) that it was closed (presumably in preparation for the upcoming holiday on Saturday, the Festival of the Scarlet Sails). Not willing to make the outing a complete waste, I proposed that we take a bus back to our apartment. After much persuasion, I convinced Latalia that nothing bad would happen to us and we hopped on the first bus that came by (actually a троллейвус or electric bus that runs on the tram lines - I saw these in Belgrade, too, but have never seen the likes of them in America). However, when it stopped at the metro station closest to our apartment, I proposed that we wait until the next stop, both to see where the bus went and to explore the city a bit more. What I was unaware of is that buses do not run in circular routes, as I had assumed... Latalia and I grew more and more nervous as we traveled further and further from our apartment in a not entirely friendly-looking neighborhood that neither of us had seen before, though I tried hard not to let it show. Soon we were the only passengers on the bus, and when it stopped at a somewhat sketchy roundabout and the контролёр (ticket-checker) indicated that we would have to get off, I began to think that my idea might not have been a very good one. Not to be discouraged, however, I proposed to Latalia that we begin walking back along the bus route and once again catch the first bus that was traveling to the metro stop near our apartment (all of the buses have a sign in them that lists the principal stops along its route, usually metro stations). Which we promptly did, and this time we got off at that stop, not waiting to see where the bus would travel next. And all was well. However, I might have a bit more difficulty convincing Latalia to be adventurous with me next time, and possibly not without good reason ;]
- I, on the other hand, not to be deterred (or perhaps warned is the better word) by our experience on Wednesday, decided to take a маршрутка (literally means "fixed-route taxi"; it's like a bus but has no fixed stops, instead you tell the driver when you want to get out) home on Thursday, since I had gone in the opposite direction in order to find a store where I could buy a large quantity of filtered water (I'm still really skeptical of the water at our house; I'm not sure what's wrong with it, but I know we're not supposed to drink it straight from the tap) as well as some other snack food. I found a great grocery store with good prices and an excellent selection but since I was still feeling poorly I had no intentions of walking the 1.25 miles home carrying a 5-liter container of water (which I bought for approximately $1.40 - at least prices for bottled water in Russia are reasonable). I waited until I saw someone else flag down a маршрутка, then hopped on behind her (after checking that it was traveling in the right direction - the маршрутка also have the principal stops of their route printed on the side of the vehicle). After figuring out that you literally paid the man driving the маршрутка, I asked him how much, at which he pointed to the sign hanging above his head that clearly read "27 рублей". Oops. Anyway, I paid him and then sat down, frantically trying to remember how to ask for a stop. I hopelessly bungled the phrase but managed to convey that I wanted him to stop when we reached the corner of my street, which he did and I gratefully got off, thinking elatedly "I did it!! I didn't die!!" And thus I proved to myself that I'm not a completely self-destructive force when loosed upon a population center. Perhaps. :D
Friday, June 18, 2010
"The Random parts of Life"
So, this week was much more exciting than last. Which probably means that I'm beginning to settle in here, which is undoubtedly a good thing.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
"Of course he had lady friends... he had a moustache!"
So, unfortunately, my first weekend in St. Petersburg turned out to be quite boring. Hopefully it gets better from here.
T.T. was at her dacha (a sort of rustic summer house that most city dwellers in Russia own and frequently visit during the summer) for most of the weekend. I'm not sure whether this was because it was a national holiday on Saturday (Russia Day, which is actually a relatively new holiday and not very widely celebrated, considering) or whether merely because it was a weekend. In any case, Latalia and I had the apartment to ourselves for the greater part of the weekend. We woke up around 9 and made ourselves breakfast, then passed the time studying until 11:30, at which time we went to meet the rest of our group and Stas, our professor, in the city center for a group outing. We used the metro for the first time and found out that it wasn't so scary after all (although Latalia did have trouble figuring out where to put her token in the turnstile...). It also wasn't as crowded as I anticipated, but perhaps that is because of the timing - it seems to me that the city doesn't really wake up on the weekends until noontime (I don't know whether that's a St. Petersburg thing, or a Russian cultural thing, or a summer thing, or a city thing in general).
We met the rest of our group on Nevsky Prospect and wandered a bit before going to the Cafe Zinger on the second floor of Dom Knigi (literally house of books), the largest bookstore in St. Petersburg which is located in the old Singer Sewing Machine Company building. The cafe was quite pricey so I only got a vanilla cream danish with fruit on it that was quite delicious. Some of the other members of my group ordered hot chocolate, which turned out to literally be chocolate that had been warmed to a drinkable consistency. I tried some, but it would have been too rich for me to have drunk an entire cup of it :P
Well, I thought the weather in Maine was crazy, but it turns out to be nothing compared to St. Petersburg. The day was a little gray and menacing when we left the house, but we still weren't prepared for the deluge that suddenly hit us when we were out wandering near the Bronze Horseman. We took shelter in a nearby Teremok, but not before getting completely soaked (fortunately, most of us had umbrellas with us. I will personally make sure I don't leave the apartment without one from now on). Teremok is the Russian idea of a fast-food restaurant, and they sell mostly блины (a kind of greasy pancake that can be filled with all sorts of things, from meat to potatoes to sour cream to fruit) which run from $1 to $3 in price. I've found that most of the food in Russia is cheaper than in America, presumably because the raw materials are cheaper.
Finally we gained a brief respite from the downpour, which we promptly took advantage of to climb to the collonade of St. Isaac's cathedral, from which height we could survey the entire city. I took some pretty amazing pictures from there - it was SO windy!! Then we headed home, exhausted. Since Saturday was my dad's birthday, I tried to call home (and got through with no problems), but international calling from my Russian cell phone is extremely expensive - it costs about 70x more to call America than to call another cell phone in my network. Thus, I only dared to say "Hey, it's Erin, call me back please" before hanging up. Unfortunately, Mom wasn't able to figure out how to do that from the Tracfone (from which it doesn't cost any more than calling me in Princeton) so I waited for the call in vain. I occupied myself for the rest of the evening studying; not the most entertaining pastime, but extremely necessary with the amount of vocabulary we are expected to absorb per week. It's a bit overwhelming at times, but the marked improvement I can already notice in my speaking ability is encouraging.
On Sunday I went to Calvary Chapel St. Pete again, this time with Phil (another member of the group who attends PFA). Though he arrived late to our designated meeting place, by the time we arrived at the church at 11:10 the 11am service had yet to start. Oh, Calvary Chapel. It's good to know some things don't change ;] This week we sang the Victory Chant in Russian - I loved it. (It sounds very military and yet quite beautiful in Russian :]) After the service I bought the church's worship album and I can't wait to listen to it (hopefully on T.T.'s CD player) because it definitely has some songs on it that I know from back home. Phil and I also tried introducing ourselves to some of the church members our own age, but soon realized that our limited vocabulary meant that we didn't have very much to talk about. Or perhaps next time we should find a more talkative interlocutor :P
The weather on Sunday wasn't much better than Saturday - very unpredictable with periods of downpour interspersed with bright sunshine. Apparently this is normal for St. Petersburg in June, but July and August can get quite hot. Right now it tends to be cool in our apartment (enough so that I need my fleece or a blanket to be comfortable while studying) but I will probably like it less when it is 90 or 95 degrees outside and hot and stuffy indoors. So I'll take it now.
On Sunday we had something new for supper for one of the first times. It was macaroni (which only differed in the shape of the pasta) and котлеты (think ground mystery meat). It tasted much better than it sounds.
I ended up spending most of Sunday studying - between breakfast and church, all afternoon after church (I came home almost immediately after the service because of the poor weather) and again after supper until bedtime. When T.T. found out that that was all Latalia and I had done all day, she commented on how boring it must be. It is, when I think about it, but I seem to have slipped back into Princeton mode where all I can think about is studying. Maybe if the weather improves I'll be more tempted to explore and actually take advantage of this wonderful city, but only time can tell. Hopefully I won't have too much homework each day to be able to do that.
I have a new favorite Russian word now: снегоход. It means snowplow, and the great thing about it is that (just like in English) it is a compound word. снег means snow, and the verb ходить means to go back and forth (to make many round trips). Thus, a снегоход is something that makes many round trips in the snow. I love it when language makes sense (which doesn't happen very often, and especially not in English :P).
On an unrelated note, this time I really will stop blogging every day. Most of what I'm doing every day here actually isn't very exciting, and if I tried to write about it I would bore myself and you. From now on, unless we do something special, I'll probably only blog 2-3 times per week, and they (hopefully) won't be as long as my previous posts. Most of you are probably glad for this, although for my few devoted followers whom I know savor every word (Justin, Luke) I feel a small pang of regret. However, in the general interest of not becoming completely boring and mundane, I will desist from (for instance) describing my dinner each night. And now in all of the time in which I could be sitting in front of this computer blogging about all of my trivials, I can be out having more adventures actually worth blogging about. It's a win-win situation. :]
T.T. was at her dacha (a sort of rustic summer house that most city dwellers in Russia own and frequently visit during the summer) for most of the weekend. I'm not sure whether this was because it was a national holiday on Saturday (Russia Day, which is actually a relatively new holiday and not very widely celebrated, considering) or whether merely because it was a weekend. In any case, Latalia and I had the apartment to ourselves for the greater part of the weekend. We woke up around 9 and made ourselves breakfast, then passed the time studying until 11:30, at which time we went to meet the rest of our group and Stas, our professor, in the city center for a group outing. We used the metro for the first time and found out that it wasn't so scary after all (although Latalia did have trouble figuring out where to put her token in the turnstile...). It also wasn't as crowded as I anticipated, but perhaps that is because of the timing - it seems to me that the city doesn't really wake up on the weekends until noontime (I don't know whether that's a St. Petersburg thing, or a Russian cultural thing, or a summer thing, or a city thing in general).
We met the rest of our group on Nevsky Prospect and wandered a bit before going to the Cafe Zinger on the second floor of Dom Knigi (literally house of books), the largest bookstore in St. Petersburg which is located in the old Singer Sewing Machine Company building. The cafe was quite pricey so I only got a vanilla cream danish with fruit on it that was quite delicious. Some of the other members of my group ordered hot chocolate, which turned out to literally be chocolate that had been warmed to a drinkable consistency. I tried some, but it would have been too rich for me to have drunk an entire cup of it :P
Well, I thought the weather in Maine was crazy, but it turns out to be nothing compared to St. Petersburg. The day was a little gray and menacing when we left the house, but we still weren't prepared for the deluge that suddenly hit us when we were out wandering near the Bronze Horseman. We took shelter in a nearby Teremok, but not before getting completely soaked (fortunately, most of us had umbrellas with us. I will personally make sure I don't leave the apartment without one from now on). Teremok is the Russian idea of a fast-food restaurant, and they sell mostly блины (a kind of greasy pancake that can be filled with all sorts of things, from meat to potatoes to sour cream to fruit) which run from $1 to $3 in price. I've found that most of the food in Russia is cheaper than in America, presumably because the raw materials are cheaper.
Finally we gained a brief respite from the downpour, which we promptly took advantage of to climb to the collonade of St. Isaac's cathedral, from which height we could survey the entire city. I took some pretty amazing pictures from there - it was SO windy!! Then we headed home, exhausted. Since Saturday was my dad's birthday, I tried to call home (and got through with no problems), but international calling from my Russian cell phone is extremely expensive - it costs about 70x more to call America than to call another cell phone in my network. Thus, I only dared to say "Hey, it's Erin, call me back please" before hanging up. Unfortunately, Mom wasn't able to figure out how to do that from the Tracfone (from which it doesn't cost any more than calling me in Princeton) so I waited for the call in vain. I occupied myself for the rest of the evening studying; not the most entertaining pastime, but extremely necessary with the amount of vocabulary we are expected to absorb per week. It's a bit overwhelming at times, but the marked improvement I can already notice in my speaking ability is encouraging.
On Sunday I went to Calvary Chapel St. Pete again, this time with Phil (another member of the group who attends PFA). Though he arrived late to our designated meeting place, by the time we arrived at the church at 11:10 the 11am service had yet to start. Oh, Calvary Chapel. It's good to know some things don't change ;] This week we sang the Victory Chant in Russian - I loved it. (It sounds very military and yet quite beautiful in Russian :]) After the service I bought the church's worship album and I can't wait to listen to it (hopefully on T.T.'s CD player) because it definitely has some songs on it that I know from back home. Phil and I also tried introducing ourselves to some of the church members our own age, but soon realized that our limited vocabulary meant that we didn't have very much to talk about. Or perhaps next time we should find a more talkative interlocutor :P
The weather on Sunday wasn't much better than Saturday - very unpredictable with periods of downpour interspersed with bright sunshine. Apparently this is normal for St. Petersburg in June, but July and August can get quite hot. Right now it tends to be cool in our apartment (enough so that I need my fleece or a blanket to be comfortable while studying) but I will probably like it less when it is 90 or 95 degrees outside and hot and stuffy indoors. So I'll take it now.
On Sunday we had something new for supper for one of the first times. It was macaroni (which only differed in the shape of the pasta) and котлеты (think ground mystery meat). It tasted much better than it sounds.
I ended up spending most of Sunday studying - between breakfast and church, all afternoon after church (I came home almost immediately after the service because of the poor weather) and again after supper until bedtime. When T.T. found out that that was all Latalia and I had done all day, she commented on how boring it must be. It is, when I think about it, but I seem to have slipped back into Princeton mode where all I can think about is studying. Maybe if the weather improves I'll be more tempted to explore and actually take advantage of this wonderful city, but only time can tell. Hopefully I won't have too much homework each day to be able to do that.
I have a new favorite Russian word now: снегоход. It means snowplow, and the great thing about it is that (just like in English) it is a compound word. снег means snow, and the verb ходить means to go back and forth (to make many round trips). Thus, a снегоход is something that makes many round trips in the snow. I love it when language makes sense (which doesn't happen very often, and especially not in English :P).
On an unrelated note, this time I really will stop blogging every day. Most of what I'm doing every day here actually isn't very exciting, and if I tried to write about it I would bore myself and you. From now on, unless we do something special, I'll probably only blog 2-3 times per week, and they (hopefully) won't be as long as my previous posts. Most of you are probably glad for this, although for my few devoted followers whom I know savor every word (Justin, Luke) I feel a small pang of regret. However, in the general interest of not becoming completely boring and mundane, I will desist from (for instance) describing my dinner each night. And now in all of the time in which I could be sitting in front of this computer blogging about all of my trivials, I can be out having more adventures actually worth blogging about. It's a win-win situation. :]
Monday, June 14, 2010
"Gm..."
Highlights of last week:
- finding out that Russians write "Gm" when they are thinking (as opposed to "Xm" which would be the closest thing the cyrillic alphabet has to an H)
- Finding hot chocolate powder (какао) at a local department store (as well as our professor, who helped us find the hot chocolate :])
- Actually carrying on a decent conversation with my host mother (Latalia and I were able to explain our rooming situation at Princeton - both of us got the short end of the stick during room draw and won't know our assigned rooms until the end of July - as well as talk about the fact that we are both on excellent scholarships, as are many students at Princeton) that didn't involve making fun of Latalia's appetite
- Discovering that the classes here are much smaller and more personal than lectures at Princeton - I feel like I'm back in one of the small AP courses I took in high school. I'm a big fan of this. :]
- Friday marked one week of wearing only skirts and dresses. I even wore - get ready for this - high heels on Friday. No joke. And these weren't platforms, or the little 1/2-inch sandals I wore to prom. These were legit 3-inch closed-toed monsters. And I wore them ALL day, and even walked the mile between my apartment and school 4 times in them. My feet are still sore. :P (But I managed not to fall down at all, which is definitely an accomplishment for me. If you know me, you know.)
- Getting caught up on this blog (which was then nullified by my not having access to a computer all weekend)
- In our first reading class, we were given a poem that we have to memorize by this Friday's test. It's by M.U. Lermontov and it's called "И скучно и грустно" (which roughly translates to "Bored and sad"). It's probably the most depressing poem I've ever read, and I took AP English Literature. Think the book of Ecclesiastes, if you took out every reference to God. Here's a pretty decent translation of it: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bored-and-sad/. Only read it if you won't mind being depressed for a while.
- Also on Wednesday, we met our "Russian Friends". Through this program, we are each paired with a young Russian around our age who is studying at the Nevsky Institute, and the idea is that we will do things together in order to get a better immersive experience. Originally the person who had contacted me on Facebook, telling me that they were my Russian Friend, was a 23-year-old male grad student. I'm sure he was plenty nice, but I didn't exactly look forward to the prospect of traipsing around a major city in a foreign country with some 23-year-old man whom I had just met. I'm sure my parents wouldn't be too enthused about that either. Fortunately (I suppose) my Russian Friend was switched (unbeknownst to me, by the way) so when we actually met our partners face-to-face, I was pleasantly surprised to have been paired with a girl closer to my age. She is 20, in fact, and studies Central European regional studies here at the Nevsky Institute. (I immediately wondered whether that included Serbia. I should ask ^.^) She started speaking to me in English and seemed surprised when I answered her in Russian (I'm not sure why she would think I wouldn't speak any of the language, after all, I am here in Russia?) We finally agreed that I would speak to her in Russian, and she would answer me in English. (I would rather she just spoke Russian. I get enough English from my Princeton friends.) We all met our Friends at once, so right across the table from me were my friend Mykola and his Friend. I was laughing at Mykola trying to speak Russian to his Friend, and just generally being myself, when my Friend (her name is Анья) remarked, "I think you're crazy." Grinning at her, I replied, "Well, it didn't take you long to figure that out." (This was after we'd been talking for maybe 3 minutes.) I didn't realize I was that obvious, but perhaps I should have guessed - Masha, Jelena, and Danilo, whom I met in Serbia, all said the same thing. :] :P Not long after that, Anya asked me "Do you smoke?" When I replied in the negative, she said "Too bad. It's good." (I very much doubt that, but I have heard that smoking is the national sport here in Russia - and I believe it.) She then inquired, "Do you drink?" To which I again replied that I did not. She remarked, "Wow, you're boring." So apparently I'm both boring and crazy, however that works out :D It's okay - I have more fun sober than most people do drunk, and I remember it all. ;]
- On that note, we had a bus tour of the city on Friday. I took all the stereotypical touristy pictures (just to make sure that I got them at some point, although I hope to get better ones later) and learned all sorts of random and relatively useless facts about St. Petersburg and it history. Near the end of the tour, some of my friends were discussing where they wanted to go out that evening; whether anyone knew of any good bars in their neighborhood yet. Being me, I said to one of them, "Just be careful tonight, ok? Take care of yourself." He knew what I meant - I care about my friends, and I think that alcohol in general is better avoided, and especially in excessive quantities. One of the other members of the group, overhearing my admonition, took offense and exclaimed, "Really? Are you serious?" At which the friend that I had been addressing attempted to explain by saying, "She doesn't drink. She's an evangelical." Which erroneous sentiment I quickly clarified. "No, I don't drink for the benefit of the people around me." At this Phil, another member of our group, commented, "I'm pretty sure that's a good idea. Although, you might not be any different drunk." Thanks, Phil. :P Then, the rest of the group tried to figure out exactly what I would be like drunk - whether I would just get really quiet, or even more bubbly and annoying, or whether I would get snappish - personally, I don't really know, and I have no intentions of finding out, either.
- On Thursday, we stayed especially late after school (I was blogging, Latalia was entertaining herself on the computers). When we finally got home at 6:30, no one else was there, so we each went to our rooms to study. T.T.'s husband, Vaseli, came home soon after us but didn't stay for very long, and when he left he locked the door behind him, presumably thinking that there was no one else in the apartment. At least, that's what T.T. thought when she got home around 7:30. This I only found out after getting so hungry by 8:00 that I came out of my room to ask if there would be any supper tonight (thinking that perhaps since we hadn't come home until 6:30, we had somehow missed it). T.T., upon seeing me, exclaimed, "Emilia! You're home?!" Since Vaseli had locked the door behind him, and neither I nor Latalia are very loud by nature (okay, clarification, I'm not loud when I'm studying.) she had no indications that we were in the apartment, and she hadn't thought to check. Needless to say, supper that night tasted particularly delicious.
- At the end of the bus tour on Friday (sorry for skipping around a bit, but I'm really trying to keep this short, if you believe me) Latalia went with Anna, one of the program directors, to get a Russian cell phone. It turns out that it would be extremely expensive for anyone with a Russian cell phone to call her on her iPhone that she brought with her, as it would technically be an international call. This was the first time that Latalia and I had been separated since arriving in St. Petersburg, and at this point Latalia still did not have a set of keys to the apartment. However, she could get into the building and I promised to stay in the apartment to let her in when she got back. This was at around 6:30. By 8:30, I was getting pretty worried about her, so I texted Anna to ask if she was still with her. She replied that she wasn't (which did nothing to allay my fears). It had become cloudy on Friday afternoon and by 7:00 there was a full downpour outside. Finally at 9:00 I heard the buzzer to the apartment and opened the door to find a very much soaked and bedraggled Latalia standing on the doorstep. She had WALKED from across town IN THE RAIN WITHOUT AN UMBRELLA because she was too nervous about taking the metro, never having been outside the US or even in a big city before. Poor child. Sounds like something I would do.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Same old, same old...
Wow. Hard to believe that I've already been in St. Petersburg for a week, yet it didn't take very long to fall into a routine. Latalia and I get up between 7 and 7:30 in order to have breakfast at 8, which is always the same: cornflakes, orange juice, yogurt, and bread (sometimes with jam, sometimes with cheese) and I always drink a cup of tea, too, because it is still rather chilly in the mornings. We leave for the Nevsky Institute at 8:30 because classes start at 9 and it's a 20-minute walk to the institute (we could take the metro, but it's only one stop, so it's really not worth the crowds and hassle). We've also fallen into a schedule with our classes: we have grammar every morning Monday thru Thursday and conversation every afternoon except Wednesdays. Wednesday afternoons and Friday mornings we have reading class. Every class is actually two 50-minute periods (which is normal for Russian education. Each class is called a para because it consists of the two sessions). We have lunch between morning and afternoon classes, for which we are given an hour. I like the food in the Nevsky cafeteria, because it's better than even the dining halls at Princeton (which is really, saying something) as well as being convenient and cheap. If I buy just rice and potatoes, it only costs 32 rubles, which is just about exactly $1. Lunch for $1? Not a bad deal, if I do say so myself. Classes end at 2, and every day this week we've stayed after so that I can catch up on my blog, which has definitely taken more time than I thought it would (although I should have known that I rarely do anything concisely). However, in the coming weeks we should be able to go right home after class on most days. When we do stay after, we get home between 5:30 and 6:30, and supper is usually ready around 6:30. Fortunately, our dinner fare is a bit more varied than breakfast: so far we've had a couple different kinds of soups, the pelmeni (meat-filled dumplings), and macaroni. Over meals are really the only times when Latalia and I interact with Tatyana Trofimovna, and I can actually see my improvement every day. At this point, the conversation still centers around Latalia's amazingly tiny appetite and our schedule at school (and T.T. also always asks how our friends are doing, and how they live compared to us, which questions we usually have to answer with Я не знаю "Ya ne znayu" - I don't know) but every day we are learning more vocabulary words, and T.T. is always willing to help us with our grammar and pronunciation. She's also very good at speaking slowly and clearly and repeating herself whenever she can see that we don't understand. Both before and after supper Latalia and I busy ourselves with our homework, which takes up an alarming amount of time. Last night I wasn't able to go to bed until midnight because I was so busy studying, although it usually isn't quite that bad. But they weren't lying when they told us that this would be an intensive course. I'm able to sleep better and better every night - I must be getting used to the light. I also notice a definite difference in the amount of natural light starting at about 10pm; I even have to turn the light on in my room to work comfortably after that time. It still gets light very early, however, and I'm trying to train myself not to start waking up until my alarm goes off in the morning (to avoid getting myself up only to find that it is only 4:30 or 5 in the morning, which happened the first few days :P).
At this point Latalia and I haven't done a great deal of exploring; mostly we walk to and from the institute and spend the rest of our free time studying. However, after we get into a better routine (and we aren't staying after in the computer lab for 4 hours after school) we will probably find that we have more free time and we may start to explore the neighborhood, as T.T. keeps encouraging us to do. I'm especially interested in visiting the zoo that is just down the street :] but I also plan to go see the many museums and parks that dot St. Petersburg at some point. Today, in fact, we have a bus tour of the city, so after that I will have much more to tell about the city in general. But, as I am trying to get myself into the habit of writing fewer and shorter blog entries, I will leave you for now. I'll try hard to have some good adventures this weekend so that I'll have a lot to tell when I return on Monday ;]. As we say in Russia, До свидания!!! (Until I see you again!)
At this point Latalia and I haven't done a great deal of exploring; mostly we walk to and from the institute and spend the rest of our free time studying. However, after we get into a better routine (and we aren't staying after in the computer lab for 4 hours after school) we will probably find that we have more free time and we may start to explore the neighborhood, as T.T. keeps encouraging us to do. I'm especially interested in visiting the zoo that is just down the street :] but I also plan to go see the many museums and parks that dot St. Petersburg at some point. Today, in fact, we have a bus tour of the city, so after that I will have much more to tell about the city in general. But, as I am trying to get myself into the habit of writing fewer and shorter blog entries, I will leave you for now. I'll try hard to have some good adventures this weekend so that I'll have a lot to tell when I return on Monday ;]. As we say in Russia, До свидания!!! (Until I see you again!)
Thursday, June 10, 2010
"Does it sound British in Russian, too?"
Monday. Our first day of classes at the Nevsky Institute of Language and Culture.
We didn't have to be at the Institute this day until 10:00, so we told Jenya (who stayed overnight, although she lives and works - in a hotel - in the suburbs) that we would have breakfast at 9. I got up at 8 and took a shower, relishing the use of conditioner once again (it seems like a small, silly thing, but if you're a girl, you probably understand). Breakfast was cereal, once again (I'm wondering when I can tell T.T. that we would be more than fine with a more traditional Russian breakfast, whatever that means) and something called a "sirok". I thought it would be something cheesy (seer means cheese) but it turned out to be something very sweet and covered in chocolate. It was the consistency of cheesecake, and I can't pin down the flavor. (We later found out that it is tvorek, a kind of very sweet, thick cream or cottage cheese) Neither I nor Latalia liked it very much, and we told Jenya that in the nicest way possible.
We left for Nevsky at 9:30 to give us plenty of time. The first thing we had was an orientation, and I was perhaps inordinately happy to see my friends from Princeton and my Russian professor, Stas, again. It had been so long since I had seen so many familiar faces (who all spoke English!) that I couldn't stop beaming from ear to ear and chattering (although, some would tell you that that is my natural state of being :P). Things were rather chaotic, but we were handed schedules and sundry pieces of important information before being marched down to a room where we could have our pictures taken for our ID cards (so that we could get in to the institute).
Here, for the general information of those of you who don't know (which would probably be everyone reading this blog), I will describe the Princeton in Petersburg program. I'm assuming that much of what I say will be equally applicable to the many such summer programs offered by Princeton University in the different corners of the globe. The program is 8 weeks long and covers the equivalent of 2 semesters of study of Intermediate Russian at Princeton University. Since it is 8 weeks instead of 2 semesters (24 weeks), and since it is Princeton, and since it takes place in St. Petersburg, it is necessarily quite intense. We have to cover the entire second-year textbook (10 chapters) in the 8 weeks we are here - you do the math, that's more than a chapter a week of grammar, in addition to the two books (M.Y. Lermontov's "Hero of our Times" and Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment") from which we'll be reading exerpts. Classes are divided into three subjects: grammar, conversation, and reading. After four weeks, we'll have a "final exam" for our "first semester" in each subject, after which Stas will return to the US :'[ and another professor from Princeton, Ksana Blank, will come to teach us reading instead of the teacher we have now. At the end of the second four weeks, we will have another round of "final exams" and we will receive a grade for both the first and second part of the course. Although this program is officially associated with Princeton University, the grading is not nearly as "draconian" (to use Stas's word) as it is for most Princeton courses - A's aren't limited to 10 or 15% of the group (since there are only 17 of us, I'm very glad).
The participants of the Princeton-in-Petersburg program are split into two groups (so that we can learn in a more personal setting, and also to maximize the teachers' efficiency). This first day we had two hours of grammar with Stas (it was just like being back at Princeton, for which I was very glad) and an hour of conversation with Natalia, a new teacher. Unfortunately for us, Natalia, like most of the faculty here at the Institute, speaks little English. (How one is supposed to teach a language to speakers of another language one does not oneself speak, I am not entirely sure.) Most importantly, this means that whenever we don't understand a word she uses, she is forced to try and explain it another way in Russian, which, more often than not, only confuses us more. Oh boy, more adventures...
After our three hours of class, we had time for lunch (good thing, too, since it was 2 pm - I was HUNGRY!) but usually we would begin classes at 9, have two hours of lessons, then have an hour for lunch before two more hours of class in the afternoon. We all ate in the Nevsky cafeteria, which worked much the same way as Frikadelki the day before. I had a piece of unspecified meat and some coleslaw, which cost 85 rubles. Feeding myself for under $3 every day? I could get used to this!!
After lunch, we had yet another orientation, where we were shown the important places in the Nevsky Institute (such as the computer lab, which is my new best friend, at least until I get caught up on my blog, which might never happen) as well as in the surrounding neighborhood. We were shown where we could exchange money or use an ATM as well as an Internet cafe (for the weekends when the computer lab isn't open) and Pyatyorochka (the department store Latalia and I had found the day before). Then Latalia and I headed home, but on the way we checked out the "Internet Klub" that was just around the corner from our apartment. It was an only somewhat sketchy internet cafe, but I hope to use mostly the computer lab at the Institute (besides, the computers here are free :]). Since our lessons are moving so quickly, Latalia and I were able to busy ourselves with homework from 3:45 (when we got home) until supper at 6.
Supper was macaroni and hot dogs again - I'm really starting to get tired of imitation American food. Although, even fake American food here is better than real American food in the States, I have to admit...
We hadn't seen T.T. all day and Jenya left at 6:45, which was fine with us since we both had more to study. What wasn't quite so fine was when T.T.'s husband came home at 7:30. Neither Latalia nor I had any idea that there was still a man in the picture, although we had both wondered whether T.T. was perhaps divorced or a widow. But when the door opened, I expected T.T., not the scruffy older man who appeared in my doorway (the door to my room is right beside the door to the apartment). He obviously had a key and knew about me, because he asked my name but not why I was there or anything. However, it was still a rather unsettling experience, and I wondered how many other unexpected visitors we would be having before we had met the entire family (T.T. had told me that she had two daughters and a grandchild - she had never said anything about a husband). I was a little disconcerted, but not too much so - I'm a pretty easygoing person, as a general rule, and I don't get flustered easily. Nevertheless, I texted one of my friends in the program, asking what I should do, and he advised me to just stay in my room and study, and not worry about it if the man didn't bother Latalia or me. Which I did (and I've since found out that Vascelli is really a harmless character, and quite jovial - it was merely the circumstances of our first meeting that were less than ideal). I heard T.T. come home at 9:30, and ended up going to bed at 10. It's getting easier to sleep every night, although it's still less than ideal - I hope that within a week I'll be back to a normal sleep schedule, not waking up as often in the morning. Again, I'm thankful for my detour to Serbia, because now I only have to adjust to a 2-hour time difference instead of 8 hours. Thank God for small blessings.
In the spirit of learning (and to pretend to myself that blogging isn't totally detracting from my progress in Russian), I'll try to add a new Russian "word of the day" to each blog entry. Today we learned the word ybui "uvwee" (which, like all things Russian, looks much cooler in Cyrillic, if I could figure out how to change the language settings on this computer where EVERYTHING ELSE except the keyboard is in Russian...). It is a rather antiquated word, and it means "woe". As in, woe is me. (which would be ybui mne "uvwee mnyeh"). Stas, our professor, was explaining to us that it is a very antiquated and outdated expression, when one of my classmates piped up, "Does it sound British in Russian, too?" He spoke in complete seriousness. I'll leave it at that ;]
We didn't have to be at the Institute this day until 10:00, so we told Jenya (who stayed overnight, although she lives and works - in a hotel - in the suburbs) that we would have breakfast at 9. I got up at 8 and took a shower, relishing the use of conditioner once again (it seems like a small, silly thing, but if you're a girl, you probably understand). Breakfast was cereal, once again (I'm wondering when I can tell T.T. that we would be more than fine with a more traditional Russian breakfast, whatever that means) and something called a "sirok". I thought it would be something cheesy (seer means cheese) but it turned out to be something very sweet and covered in chocolate. It was the consistency of cheesecake, and I can't pin down the flavor. (We later found out that it is tvorek, a kind of very sweet, thick cream or cottage cheese) Neither I nor Latalia liked it very much, and we told Jenya that in the nicest way possible.
We left for Nevsky at 9:30 to give us plenty of time. The first thing we had was an orientation, and I was perhaps inordinately happy to see my friends from Princeton and my Russian professor, Stas, again. It had been so long since I had seen so many familiar faces (who all spoke English!) that I couldn't stop beaming from ear to ear and chattering (although, some would tell you that that is my natural state of being :P). Things were rather chaotic, but we were handed schedules and sundry pieces of important information before being marched down to a room where we could have our pictures taken for our ID cards (so that we could get in to the institute).
Here, for the general information of those of you who don't know (which would probably be everyone reading this blog), I will describe the Princeton in Petersburg program. I'm assuming that much of what I say will be equally applicable to the many such summer programs offered by Princeton University in the different corners of the globe. The program is 8 weeks long and covers the equivalent of 2 semesters of study of Intermediate Russian at Princeton University. Since it is 8 weeks instead of 2 semesters (24 weeks), and since it is Princeton, and since it takes place in St. Petersburg, it is necessarily quite intense. We have to cover the entire second-year textbook (10 chapters) in the 8 weeks we are here - you do the math, that's more than a chapter a week of grammar, in addition to the two books (M.Y. Lermontov's "Hero of our Times" and Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment") from which we'll be reading exerpts. Classes are divided into three subjects: grammar, conversation, and reading. After four weeks, we'll have a "final exam" for our "first semester" in each subject, after which Stas will return to the US :'[ and another professor from Princeton, Ksana Blank, will come to teach us reading instead of the teacher we have now. At the end of the second four weeks, we will have another round of "final exams" and we will receive a grade for both the first and second part of the course. Although this program is officially associated with Princeton University, the grading is not nearly as "draconian" (to use Stas's word) as it is for most Princeton courses - A's aren't limited to 10 or 15% of the group (since there are only 17 of us, I'm very glad).
The participants of the Princeton-in-Petersburg program are split into two groups (so that we can learn in a more personal setting, and also to maximize the teachers' efficiency). This first day we had two hours of grammar with Stas (it was just like being back at Princeton, for which I was very glad) and an hour of conversation with Natalia, a new teacher. Unfortunately for us, Natalia, like most of the faculty here at the Institute, speaks little English. (How one is supposed to teach a language to speakers of another language one does not oneself speak, I am not entirely sure.) Most importantly, this means that whenever we don't understand a word she uses, she is forced to try and explain it another way in Russian, which, more often than not, only confuses us more. Oh boy, more adventures...
After our three hours of class, we had time for lunch (good thing, too, since it was 2 pm - I was HUNGRY!) but usually we would begin classes at 9, have two hours of lessons, then have an hour for lunch before two more hours of class in the afternoon. We all ate in the Nevsky cafeteria, which worked much the same way as Frikadelki the day before. I had a piece of unspecified meat and some coleslaw, which cost 85 rubles. Feeding myself for under $3 every day? I could get used to this!!
After lunch, we had yet another orientation, where we were shown the important places in the Nevsky Institute (such as the computer lab, which is my new best friend, at least until I get caught up on my blog, which might never happen) as well as in the surrounding neighborhood. We were shown where we could exchange money or use an ATM as well as an Internet cafe (for the weekends when the computer lab isn't open) and Pyatyorochka (the department store Latalia and I had found the day before). Then Latalia and I headed home, but on the way we checked out the "Internet Klub" that was just around the corner from our apartment. It was an only somewhat sketchy internet cafe, but I hope to use mostly the computer lab at the Institute (besides, the computers here are free :]). Since our lessons are moving so quickly, Latalia and I were able to busy ourselves with homework from 3:45 (when we got home) until supper at 6.
Supper was macaroni and hot dogs again - I'm really starting to get tired of imitation American food. Although, even fake American food here is better than real American food in the States, I have to admit...
We hadn't seen T.T. all day and Jenya left at 6:45, which was fine with us since we both had more to study. What wasn't quite so fine was when T.T.'s husband came home at 7:30. Neither Latalia nor I had any idea that there was still a man in the picture, although we had both wondered whether T.T. was perhaps divorced or a widow. But when the door opened, I expected T.T., not the scruffy older man who appeared in my doorway (the door to my room is right beside the door to the apartment). He obviously had a key and knew about me, because he asked my name but not why I was there or anything. However, it was still a rather unsettling experience, and I wondered how many other unexpected visitors we would be having before we had met the entire family (T.T. had told me that she had two daughters and a grandchild - she had never said anything about a husband). I was a little disconcerted, but not too much so - I'm a pretty easygoing person, as a general rule, and I don't get flustered easily. Nevertheless, I texted one of my friends in the program, asking what I should do, and he advised me to just stay in my room and study, and not worry about it if the man didn't bother Latalia or me. Which I did (and I've since found out that Vascelli is really a harmless character, and quite jovial - it was merely the circumstances of our first meeting that were less than ideal). I heard T.T. come home at 9:30, and ended up going to bed at 10. It's getting easier to sleep every night, although it's still less than ideal - I hope that within a week I'll be back to a normal sleep schedule, not waking up as often in the morning. Again, I'm thankful for my detour to Serbia, because now I only have to adjust to a 2-hour time difference instead of 8 hours. Thank God for small blessings.
In the spirit of learning (and to pretend to myself that blogging isn't totally detracting from my progress in Russian), I'll try to add a new Russian "word of the day" to each blog entry. Today we learned the word ybui "uvwee" (which, like all things Russian, looks much cooler in Cyrillic, if I could figure out how to change the language settings on this computer where EVERYTHING ELSE except the keyboard is in Russian...). It is a rather antiquated word, and it means "woe". As in, woe is me. (which would be ybui mne "uvwee mnyeh"). Stas, our professor, was explaining to us that it is a very antiquated and outdated expression, when one of my classmates piped up, "Does it sound British in Russian, too?" He spoke in complete seriousness. I'll leave it at that ;]
Calvary Chapel
While I hadn't originally thought that I would be ready to attend church on the first Sunday morning I was in St. Petersburg, I didn't really know what else to do with myself, so I figured that I would try to find the Calvary Chapel that I had researched from America. As a matter of fact, in typical me fashion, I had not only found their website but Google Map-ped their address and my own and printed out directions. As it turns out, it's really not very far from my apartment (actually, I don't feel that anything is, especially after walking around Belgrade for a week with Nikola. I would much rather walk places than attempt a bus or the metro). So, I got up at 8 on Sunday morning and got all ready for church, taking care to dress in my nicest clothes and spending extra time on my hair and makeup (girls in Russia actually do look nicer when going out of the house than they do in America, so even though it was a Calvary Chapel I guessed that people would look nicer than back home, so I should too). T.T. came back to the apartment at 8:30 and told me that she had attended the early service at her church (which I assume is Russian Orthodox, but I don't know) at 7am. She said they also have a service at 10am, but I was impressed that she went to the 7am service. Upon learning that I also wanted to attend church (and Latalia too, as I had asked her last night) she asked whether I usually did. When I told her that I was accustomed to attending multiple services per week, she seemed to approve and asked whether most people in America went to church. What a question! I answered that it depended on where you were, but at least in college most people did not, and if they did, it was only Sunday morning. I wonder what she thought beforehand about Americans' church-going habits; what image do we portray to the rest of the world?
Breakfast, served at 9:30, was cornflakes again, this time accompanied by some bread with nuts and berries in it. It was quite good, the berries adding a good flavor to what would otherwise be a rather plain dish. She also gave us orange juice to drink because I had indicated that that was my usual breakfast fare, although she herself complained that most juices were too fake. I'm impressed with how much T.T. is trying to cater to us and get us the food that we want, although I'm more than willing to eat almost anything that crosses my plate and have tried several times to express that to her.
We finally set off for church around 10, in order to give us plenty of time to find the service. I also knew of two other Princetonians who had expressed interest in attending Calvary Chapel with us, but I had no way of getting in contact with them yet (as I later learned, they had gone to the nearest metro stop and waited for a while, hoping to catch us going by - oops, I'll make sure we set a time and place to meet in future weeks). We found the building without too much trouble, although getting to the service was another matter. In typical Calvary Chapel fashion, the church has no building of its own - it instead meets in the upper room of a Lutheran Cathedral. Latalia and I couldn't find anything about Calvary Chapel on the bulletin board outside the cathedral (of course, it didn't help that it was all in Russian) but we eventually ventured inside and upstairs and, after a wrong turn or two, found ourselves in a large room in which were set up pews with plastic chairs behind them. There was a stage at the front of the room on which stood the praise and worship team, rehearsing for the upcoming service. Although I couldn't understand the words they were singing, I recognized the tune - it was Holy, Holy, Holy, a song that we have often sung at Calvary Chapel Central Maine in the last few years!!! It was, not surprisingly, translated into Russian (which, as far as I'm concerned, is even cooler!) and beside the stage was a projector screen onto which I correctly assumed the words would be projected once the service started. Everywhere I looked I saw things that were distinctly Calvary Chapel, from the instruments in the worship band to the drumset in the corner to the symbol of the dove to the communion being prepared in the back, and I was beaming from ear to ear. I had gone all the way across the globe only to find myself at home.
Latalia and I found a Russian-English Bible on a shelf on one side of the room and took our seats, waiting for the service to begin. It was just like home - we sang the same songs with the words up on the screen (my favorite was Heart of Worship) and I was glad that I had studied "Christian" vocabulary in Russian before coming, since I was able to understand the general meaning of most of what we sung (which my knowledge of the English versions of the songs also greatly helped). After worship, we were told to "greet one another in the name of the Lord" (in Russian) before we sat down to listen to the sermon :] As it happened, sitting directly behind us was a Canadian woman, Betty, and Latalia and I were more than relieved to find a native English speaker (as I rather suspected that we would, since Calvary Chapel Central St. Petersburg is a church plant from the US). We introduced ourselves and Betty congratulated us on so soon finding a church to attend, at which I explained that I attend a Calvary Chapel back in the States and was more than happy to find one here. Then the pastor stood up to speak (and, unlike back home in Maine, he actually had to ask people to sit down - I bet that's a cultural thing :]). He preached in Russian, but he had an English translator (to my great relief), and the sermon was on Revelation 11:1-22. Just as it would be at home, the pastor explained that the foundational principle of Calvary Chapel was to read the Word of God, and so that was the priority every time the church gathered. No topical sermons, just readin' and 'splainin' (as Pastor Ken would say :]).
After the service, Betty invited us to lunch, which invitationn we gratefully accepted. We went to Frikadelki (it means meatball in Russian) and the system there was different than anything I've ever seen at a restaurant. It was very similar to an a la carte cafeteria, except that the food was edible: it was all on individual plates or in warming containers, and the customers picked up a tray and silverware from the beginning of the line and then selected what they wanted to eat. At the end, the prices for each item selected were totaled and you paid for whatever you took. Not something completely new, but I had never seen a restaurant set up like this. I selected some mors (a sort of very bitter fruit juice that I didn't end up liking), a piece of chicken, and a roll with ham and cheese in it. The total came to 158 rubles - about $5. That's pretty good for a decent-sized meal. We talked more with Betty over lunch and when she learned that we had a shopping list, she offered to help us find what we were looking for. Latalia needed a bath towel (T.T. didn't give either of us one, but fortunately I can use my travel towel), and we both wanted to find a place to get bottled water and some different tea (I still had high hopes of finding some that I liked). We visited several stores but were unsuccessful, so we bid adieu to Betty after exchanging telephone numbers and telling her that we'd be back in chuch the next week.
On the way home we stopped in a small produkti; these are very common in Russia and are small grocery stores, usually privately owned and many advertise that they are open 24 hours. Here we were successful - we found bottled water for about $.50 and a package of Pickwick assorted fruit teas that looked promising. Before returning to the apartment we decided to find the institute where we would be having classes the next day, to avoid the hassle of getting lost in the morning. It also isn't far from our apartment, about a 20-minute walk, and we found it with no trouble. On the way back we found a good-sized department store and looked around inside it, but didn't see any bath towels; however, it was still good to know, since we could buy most other things there. When we finally came back to the apartment, it was 4:00, and we were the only ones home. We talked together for a while (in English) about various things, mostly comparing backgrounds and preferences. We're remarkably similar, since she grew up in a small town in West Virginia and this is also her first time outside the country. At 6, Jenya returned home and made us supper; a different soup this time with potatoes, onions, and carrots. I liked it reasonably well, although I've never been much of a soup person (when I was younger, it was the one meal I would refuse to eat). Latalia, however, has a more sensitive stomach and so she must be careful about consuming new and different foods (and she is also much more petite than I am, so her appetite is smaller) and this has become a constant source of teasing at the dinner table, as I always eat at least twice as much as her. Russians pride themselves on their hospitality, and they especially like to display this by cooking, so refusing food at a Russian house or not eating very much risks offending the host. T.T. constantly asks whether Latalia usually eats this little, which she insists that she does; this seems to placate T.T. a bit, although she still constantly encourages her to eat more.
When, after supper, Jenya inquired as to whether we would be having tea (literally translated, this is how Russians ask if you want to eat or drink something. They say budesh? or budete? depending on their relationship to their interlocutor (budete is more formal) which just means "you will?") and we gave enthusiastic assent. Latalia isn't very partial to tea either, but we had high hopes for the fruit tea. I selected "Juicy Strawberry" and Latalia decided to try "Sweet Raspberry" (we happened to only find english packaging, so I don't even know the Russian equivalents). To my great delight and relief, I found that I genuinely enjoyed the tea! It didn't even taste like tea, just vaguely fruity, which was fine with me as it meant that I wouldn't have to be buying bottled water everyday or risking my health by drinking the tap water (although, as Jenya told us later, they boil any water that they'll be drinking, because they also know that it isn't very clean). This was really my first great triumph in Russia, and it made my prospects for the next two months seem much brighter.
After supper, Latalia and I went back to her room and talked for several more hours, about our educational plans, what we expected Russia to be like, my time in Serbia and how it compared - we get along splendidly, and we think in much the same way. I'm so glad; it could have been really awful if I had been rooming with someone that I didn't like. Although, I had already known that I liked Latalia and we had actually requested to be placed together. At one point, T.T. inquired as to whether all of the students roomed in pairs, and told us that she thought that was a better way to do things, since we could help each other and speak in English together if communicating in Russian became too difficult. Finally, at 10:30, we each called it a night (although it was anything but night outside :P). However, it was noticeably darker, and I sincerely hope that I will eventually get used to the semi-dusk of the White Nights. I tried sleeping on one pillow and putting another over my face to make it darker - hopefully it helps.
Breakfast, served at 9:30, was cornflakes again, this time accompanied by some bread with nuts and berries in it. It was quite good, the berries adding a good flavor to what would otherwise be a rather plain dish. She also gave us orange juice to drink because I had indicated that that was my usual breakfast fare, although she herself complained that most juices were too fake. I'm impressed with how much T.T. is trying to cater to us and get us the food that we want, although I'm more than willing to eat almost anything that crosses my plate and have tried several times to express that to her.
We finally set off for church around 10, in order to give us plenty of time to find the service. I also knew of two other Princetonians who had expressed interest in attending Calvary Chapel with us, but I had no way of getting in contact with them yet (as I later learned, they had gone to the nearest metro stop and waited for a while, hoping to catch us going by - oops, I'll make sure we set a time and place to meet in future weeks). We found the building without too much trouble, although getting to the service was another matter. In typical Calvary Chapel fashion, the church has no building of its own - it instead meets in the upper room of a Lutheran Cathedral. Latalia and I couldn't find anything about Calvary Chapel on the bulletin board outside the cathedral (of course, it didn't help that it was all in Russian) but we eventually ventured inside and upstairs and, after a wrong turn or two, found ourselves in a large room in which were set up pews with plastic chairs behind them. There was a stage at the front of the room on which stood the praise and worship team, rehearsing for the upcoming service. Although I couldn't understand the words they were singing, I recognized the tune - it was Holy, Holy, Holy, a song that we have often sung at Calvary Chapel Central Maine in the last few years!!! It was, not surprisingly, translated into Russian (which, as far as I'm concerned, is even cooler!) and beside the stage was a projector screen onto which I correctly assumed the words would be projected once the service started. Everywhere I looked I saw things that were distinctly Calvary Chapel, from the instruments in the worship band to the drumset in the corner to the symbol of the dove to the communion being prepared in the back, and I was beaming from ear to ear. I had gone all the way across the globe only to find myself at home.
Latalia and I found a Russian-English Bible on a shelf on one side of the room and took our seats, waiting for the service to begin. It was just like home - we sang the same songs with the words up on the screen (my favorite was Heart of Worship) and I was glad that I had studied "Christian" vocabulary in Russian before coming, since I was able to understand the general meaning of most of what we sung (which my knowledge of the English versions of the songs also greatly helped). After worship, we were told to "greet one another in the name of the Lord" (in Russian) before we sat down to listen to the sermon :] As it happened, sitting directly behind us was a Canadian woman, Betty, and Latalia and I were more than relieved to find a native English speaker (as I rather suspected that we would, since Calvary Chapel Central St. Petersburg is a church plant from the US). We introduced ourselves and Betty congratulated us on so soon finding a church to attend, at which I explained that I attend a Calvary Chapel back in the States and was more than happy to find one here. Then the pastor stood up to speak (and, unlike back home in Maine, he actually had to ask people to sit down - I bet that's a cultural thing :]). He preached in Russian, but he had an English translator (to my great relief), and the sermon was on Revelation 11:1-22. Just as it would be at home, the pastor explained that the foundational principle of Calvary Chapel was to read the Word of God, and so that was the priority every time the church gathered. No topical sermons, just readin' and 'splainin' (as Pastor Ken would say :]).
After the service, Betty invited us to lunch, which invitationn we gratefully accepted. We went to Frikadelki (it means meatball in Russian) and the system there was different than anything I've ever seen at a restaurant. It was very similar to an a la carte cafeteria, except that the food was edible: it was all on individual plates or in warming containers, and the customers picked up a tray and silverware from the beginning of the line and then selected what they wanted to eat. At the end, the prices for each item selected were totaled and you paid for whatever you took. Not something completely new, but I had never seen a restaurant set up like this. I selected some mors (a sort of very bitter fruit juice that I didn't end up liking), a piece of chicken, and a roll with ham and cheese in it. The total came to 158 rubles - about $5. That's pretty good for a decent-sized meal. We talked more with Betty over lunch and when she learned that we had a shopping list, she offered to help us find what we were looking for. Latalia needed a bath towel (T.T. didn't give either of us one, but fortunately I can use my travel towel), and we both wanted to find a place to get bottled water and some different tea (I still had high hopes of finding some that I liked). We visited several stores but were unsuccessful, so we bid adieu to Betty after exchanging telephone numbers and telling her that we'd be back in chuch the next week.
On the way home we stopped in a small produkti; these are very common in Russia and are small grocery stores, usually privately owned and many advertise that they are open 24 hours. Here we were successful - we found bottled water for about $.50 and a package of Pickwick assorted fruit teas that looked promising. Before returning to the apartment we decided to find the institute where we would be having classes the next day, to avoid the hassle of getting lost in the morning. It also isn't far from our apartment, about a 20-minute walk, and we found it with no trouble. On the way back we found a good-sized department store and looked around inside it, but didn't see any bath towels; however, it was still good to know, since we could buy most other things there. When we finally came back to the apartment, it was 4:00, and we were the only ones home. We talked together for a while (in English) about various things, mostly comparing backgrounds and preferences. We're remarkably similar, since she grew up in a small town in West Virginia and this is also her first time outside the country. At 6, Jenya returned home and made us supper; a different soup this time with potatoes, onions, and carrots. I liked it reasonably well, although I've never been much of a soup person (when I was younger, it was the one meal I would refuse to eat). Latalia, however, has a more sensitive stomach and so she must be careful about consuming new and different foods (and she is also much more petite than I am, so her appetite is smaller) and this has become a constant source of teasing at the dinner table, as I always eat at least twice as much as her. Russians pride themselves on their hospitality, and they especially like to display this by cooking, so refusing food at a Russian house or not eating very much risks offending the host. T.T. constantly asks whether Latalia usually eats this little, which she insists that she does; this seems to placate T.T. a bit, although she still constantly encourages her to eat more.
When, after supper, Jenya inquired as to whether we would be having tea (literally translated, this is how Russians ask if you want to eat or drink something. They say budesh? or budete? depending on their relationship to their interlocutor (budete is more formal) which just means "you will?") and we gave enthusiastic assent. Latalia isn't very partial to tea either, but we had high hopes for the fruit tea. I selected "Juicy Strawberry" and Latalia decided to try "Sweet Raspberry" (we happened to only find english packaging, so I don't even know the Russian equivalents). To my great delight and relief, I found that I genuinely enjoyed the tea! It didn't even taste like tea, just vaguely fruity, which was fine with me as it meant that I wouldn't have to be buying bottled water everyday or risking my health by drinking the tap water (although, as Jenya told us later, they boil any water that they'll be drinking, because they also know that it isn't very clean). This was really my first great triumph in Russia, and it made my prospects for the next two months seem much brighter.
After supper, Latalia and I went back to her room and talked for several more hours, about our educational plans, what we expected Russia to be like, my time in Serbia and how it compared - we get along splendidly, and we think in much the same way. I'm so glad; it could have been really awful if I had been rooming with someone that I didn't like. Although, I had already known that I liked Latalia and we had actually requested to be placed together. At one point, T.T. inquired as to whether all of the students roomed in pairs, and told us that she thought that was a better way to do things, since we could help each other and speak in English together if communicating in Russian became too difficult. Finally, at 10:30, we each called it a night (although it was anything but night outside :P). However, it was noticeably darker, and I sincerely hope that I will eventually get used to the semi-dusk of the White Nights. I tried sleeping on one pillow and putting another over my face to make it darker - hopefully it helps.
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
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
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