The Last Gasp

I would be hard put to say whether this last week passed more quickly or slowly than the others.  It certainly seemed to last long enough while we were in the midst of it...

• Monday marked our last Reading class - our final is Wednesday.  Reading was probably my least favorite subject of the three - I'm not sad to have it over with. :P  Likewise with Grammar, though that was much more enjoyable... at this point, most of us are just ready to be done.  It's even difficult for me to get up the motivation to study, I'm so burnt out... I really think 8 weeks is too long for an intensive program such as this, without any breaks.  The progress is evident, but it still wears on you.
• Monday also marked my last official meeting with my Russian friend.  We met after school and walked to one of the northern islands (Yelagin Island, the one that I explored during my not-so-well-thought-out late night excursion).  We rented a pair of roller blades for me (Ksyusha had managed to find her own pair) and spent two hours criss-crossing the island on the asphalt paths.  That's the thing about roller blades - they don't really work on anything but asphalt.  Trust me - we tried. :P  We visited the "zoo" on the island: a collection of half a dozen pens of goats, sheep, and a pair of bedraggled reindeer.  We went to the very tip of the island, where it faces the Gulf of Finland, and looked out across the water to where the horizon blended together and the sky became indistinguishable from the sea (sorry, thought I'd wax a little poetic there ;]).  Then we made laps around the island until our two hours were up, trying to get our money's worth (the cost to rent the roller blades was $10 per hour, but it was Princeton's money, so I didn't really mind ;]).  Unfortunately, Ksyusha was much slower on her blades than I was, not having skated for 2 years, which slowed me down a little and took a little bit of the fun out of it, since she was constantly behind me and I often had to slow down or wait up for her.  But we skated the entire two hours, and at the end got a pleasant surprise when Zarina, my other Russian friend (remember that fateful day at the McDonalds?) also showed up.  Since we hadn't even come close to spending the $250 allotted to us by Princeton for the program, we decided to treat ourselves to supper on a cafe on the island.  The food was good, but nothing special: I had a milkshake, a pork shishkebob and a "ceasar salad."  Russians sure do have a strange idea of a salad: at home, I'll get a single vegetable (usually a carrot) grated into a bowl and mixed with mayonnaise.  At the cafe, the "salad" consisted of a few leaves of lettuce, a hard-boiled egg, a slice or two of tomato, some cheese, and an onion or two, all drenched in dressing.  It was certainly not an entire serving.  But we accomplished our aim: the bill came to 1065 rubles (~$35) and we filled our stomachs.  On the way home I purposely went out of the way to get some ice cream at the Baskin-Robbins on Nevsky Prospect: I figured since ice cream is so much better here than in the States, and since Baskin-Robbins is really good ice cream back home (at least, it's pricey enough...), therefore, Baskin-Robbins in Russia must be to die for.  Unfortunately, there was a logical error somewhere in my theory.  It wasn't worth it - I paid $4.50 for two tiny scoops in a waffle cone and it wasn't even as good as the ice cream at Чайная ложка which I can buy for one-third the price.  But, you live and learn, I suppose...
• Unfortunately, our Conversation class has finally begun to get interesting, just about the time we are finishing the program.  We started playing word games this week, and the teacher would have us do a dialogue on an assigned topic, then we would have to answer questions from our classmates on other topics of the teacher's choice.  It is a good exercise in improvisation and coherency - exactly the skills one would need in an actual conversation.  I wish we had begun this four weeks ago - but perhaps four weeks ago we would not have been able to do this.  Who knows.  In any case, I am finding it more and more difficult to enjoy classes in general, and studying even less so.  Both Tuesday and Wednesday I made valiant attempts to study, with the effect that I probably added a dozen or so words to my vocabulary, and decided that I already knew most of the grammar topics fairly well.  Well, we'll see about that.
• Wednesday was our last "excursion" with our group - we went to a combination ballet-drama performance at a little-known theater in the city center.  The dialogue (or, I should really say, monologue) was simple enough that I could follow most of it - something about a deranged man in the psych ward who wants to dance and doesn't think anyone understands him.  Typical Russian plotline, I suppose.  In any case, the dancing was very beautiful, especially the female dancer (whom I later learned was one person in several costumes, not several separate dancers, as I at first thought.  I don't do culture, ok?  I'm from Maine.  Give me a break).  The highlight of that night was beating Latalia home, even though I walked and she took the metro, and it was a 45-minute walk.  I now feel justified in walking everywhere instead of taking a circuitous and complicated metro ride that involves several transfers.  :P
• The way it worked out, our group had one final exam on each of the last three days of classes.  Wednesday was Reading - it was a difficult essay test, and the teacher didn't make it clear until afterwards that she would focus on grammar and clarity instead of actual content (as she said, this is a language, not a literature, course).  I wish I had known that before I slaved away for 90 minutes on it.  Still, I will probably get a satisfactory grade, after all; I probably should have studied more vocab related to the topic, but I can't change that now.  Thursday was Grammar - as I suspected, I was basically ready.  Although we also had Grammar class on Friday, the teacher wanted to be able to give us our tests back and take any questions, so we took the test a day early (which was fine with me - as I said, I was just ready to get it over with).  I did reasonably well - the mistakes that I made were either stupid or not something that much more studying would have helped.  Today, Friday, we had Conversation - the teacher called us up one by one and gave us a topic, which we then had to discourse on then and there without preparation.  Finally, something that simulates actual conversation in Conversation class!!  Actually, I preferred not having time to prepare - it set the standard lower and it was more excusable to ramble and not have a concrete storyline or something exceptionally creative to tell about (my classmates consistently put me to shame in that area during the last semester).  My topic was "Film and Television," so I talked about how I rarely watch TV, and my favorite movies and genres of movies, and the movies I have watched here in Russia.  I got an A, as did most people - the class isn't particularly strenuous, and the grading is actually somewhat arbitrary, from what we can see.
• Thursday I had the opportunity to meet Ksyusha one last time.  My sister Emily wanted a tie-dye T-shirt with cyrillic lettering on it for a souvenir - I didn't realize how American tie-dye is until I started looking around.  Ksyusha thought she had found a place where I could get one, but it turns out that it was a false lead - they only had black and white shirts, and none of them I particularly liked.  I'll get one today from one of the souvenir kiosks (sometime between packing, buying last-minute food items and meeting my traveling companions for supper at 6:45 :P).  But, we were able to visit the Zoological Museum again, since we hadn't been able to finish it last time - and was I ever glad we did!  As it turns out, admission to the museum is free on the last Thursday of every month - and guess what yesterday was?  That was a nice surprise.  I found out that what I had thought was a small side-hall of the museum turned out to be where most of the exhibits were located - including a couple of mummified baby mammoths and more antlers on the wall than I have ever seen in my life.  Their bird collection was also enormous - it is amazing to think of the breadth and variety of species out there!  It was just amazing to see all of the creativity there is in God's creation - not to mention I got to see some of my favorite animals that I have never seen before (i.e. an okapi ^.^).  After this, my feet were tired, so I pointed them homeward.  Latalia was going out for supper with some friends, so I made myself pelmeni (my favorite Russian dish) and a carrot "salad" and sipped my tea, feeling very Russian.  I think this country has gotten me into the tea-drinking habit - I'm even bringing some home so that I can have it occasionally in my dorm room at Princeton.  Who knew... :]  After supper, I called Tatyana to let her know of my plans for the next day concerning my departure for Moscow, and we talked for a full 13 minutes in Russian!  And I understood her!!!  I really have made progress (which she also noted, and congratulated me for effusively and repetitively :P)

And so we come to the end.  Moscow now is going to seem like an epilogue, of sorts... but a good one.  I'll have to tell you all about it (and my epic return journey) when I get back.  Until then, stay sane!  Twewthfully yours, Эмилия ;]

Welcome to the Jungle

My last weekend in St. Petersburg.  It seems strange that now we are coming up to all of the "last"s: last weekend, last Monday, last quizzes... but it's good.  I'm ready to come home now.

• I was planning to do all of my souvenir shopping in one fell swoop on Saturday: just set aside the day and wander from souvenir stand to souvenir stand, searching for the best deals.  I should have known that things never work out the way you want them to :P  For starters, a terrific thunderstorm started up just as I was planning to head out.  It was no use searching for souvenirs in the rain, so I was forced to stay in and study all morning - and am I ever tired of studying.  Finally, around noontime, I headed out in search of some lunch (the rain had stopped by this time, but it was still cloudy and threatening).  I here ran into some luck; stopping by Петёрочка, I found microwaveable popcorn, and then! a rack of DVDs, $3.99 each.  Browsing through these, one in particular caught my eye: Хроникли Нарнии: Принс Каспиан.  I quickly checked the back of the case: indeed, it was in Russian, English, and Ukranian.  My decision was made: armed with the popcorn, the movie, and a chocolate bar for good measure, I happily traipsed back to the apartment, stopping by Teremok on the way to pick up a ham-and-cheese blin for lunch.  The movie was thoroughly enjoyable (in English, of course - I hadn't yet had the pleasure of watching the second Narnia movie, and my Russian is certainly not at the level to understand an entire movie...) and the popcorn was delicious, albeit a bit on the stale side.  The chocolate made up for that, however... I'm trying to find the best European chocolate over here that isn't too expensive, so that I can bring some back for you guys :]
• Finally, by the time I had finished the movie, the weather had cleared up and the sun was doing its best to make up for the morning's rain by shining twice as strongly.  Seeing as it was only 2:30, I decided that there was no time like the present to set out, and perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to only shop for an afternoon rather than an entire day.  With this in mind, my hopes high, and my wallet fat, I set out on my adventure.  
• As you can imagine, I systematically searched all of the souvenir kiosks between me and the center of the city, looking for the perfect gifts for my friends and family (and more importantly, at the perfect prices).  Although this may surprise you, I can get quite nervous when it comes to bartering, but the fact that I had a limited amount of money to spend and a certain amount of souvenirs to buy helped to bolster my courage.  I quickly learned that some salespeople are much quicker to bargain than others, and some will barely engage you (the more engaging ones are harder to get away from, I find).  I also found out that the more expensive the souvenir is, the more of a discount you can get for it.  Finally, I learned that the souvenir stores are not always more expensive than the kiosks... and that, though матрошки did not originate in Russia, contrary to popular opinion (they actually come from Japan), they are now the classic Russian souvenir - and they are everywhere.  It is rare to find a kiosk that doesn't have a few of the portly stacking dolls lined up on a shelf, or on display.  And you can find матрошки with pictures of anything - from the traditional Russian babushkas to fairy tales (I was particularly interested in these for my cousin Grace, but they were all very expensive) to sports teams to the Beatles to Russian political leaders to Barack Obama and family to popular movies and TV shows (I even found a LOTR матрошкa, but the quality wasn't very high, so I passed on that one).  Not to bore you with all of the details or a description of all of the souvenirs that I purchased (you can see them when I return, and if you're lucky, you'll even get one :]), I'll just say that after $100 I had found most of the souvenirs that I was looking for, and then some.
• By this time it was already 8:00, and the kiosks were beginning to close shop for the day, so I headed home to a supper of cold vegetables.  It sounds gross (and probably was) but after walking around for 6 hours in the scorching heat (the sun quickly warmed things up even after the morning's thunderstorm) they tasted like a gourmet meal.  Still in a somewhat lazy mood, it struck my fancy to watch a movie in Russian before I went to bed.  Tatyana has a smallish collection of DVDs and videos, including several multi-movie DVDs the likes of which I have never seen in the States.  From one of these I finally selected King Kong as my film of choice, mostly because I figured the dialogue would not be crucial to the plot (at this point in my Russian, I still only understand about half of what is said at normal speed).  However, this turned out not to be such a great decision: I didn't realize that the movie was 3 hours long, so it was past midnight when I finally got to bed.  Normally, this would not have been a problem, particularly on a Saturday night, except for the fact that I had requested to accompany Tatyana to the 7:00 Orthodox service the next morning.  Well, we all make mistakes...
• Regardless of my insufficient night's sleep, I arose at 6:30 in order to prepare to attend the service with Tatyana.  We walked over to the cathedral, which is very close to our apartment.  The service lasted about 90 minutes, and I will do my best to describe my impressions here.  The thing that struck me most was the ritual of it all: there was a set order in which things were done, and I imagine that many of the same things are said every week.  But there was more than enough happening during the service to keep my attention: the (non-professional) choir sang slow, solemn hymns in Old Church Slavonic (T.T. informed me that her husband Vacilly also sings in that choir); the priests in their long, ornate golden robes walked around the altar, came out in front of the congregation and declared things, then walked back behind the iconostasis; one of the priests produced an incense burner and proceeded around the altar and back and forth in front of the worshipers, swinging it in a rhythm; members of the congregation bought and lighted candles in front of the various icons hanging on the walls and the columns, recited prayers before them and kissed the glass frames protecting them; an offering was taken by three humble-looking ladies who passed around the cathedral holding offering-plates; a golden chalice was produced with much ceremony and the members of the congregation were each fed a spoonful of its contents before they filed over (with crossed arms) to the table where communion was being served; one of the priests mounted a raised platform and spoke for a few minutes, apparently reading a prayer or passage of scripture from a large tome; a gilded book was brought out, opened, read from, then replaced somewhere behind the altar (I'm assuming it was a Bible); and at the end, the oldest priest took a golden crucifix and allowed each of the worshipers to kiss it, in turn, before they filed out of the cathedral.  I was exceedingly impressed by the acoustics of the cathedral, until I realized that there were strategically placed microphones near where the priests stood to talk (but I'm still sure that the building was designed so that sound from that specific place would resonate the most).  It was also interesting to see the dress of the people who attended the service: all of the women were in skirts that came at least to their knees, and they all wore head-scarves (I did too; no woman is allowed to enter a working cathedral with her head uncovered), and none of the men wore shorts or hats; but that is where the uniformity ended.  The people were dressed in all different stages of formality: some men wore khakis and dress shirts, but some were in jeans and T-shirts.  The priests also surprised me with their lack of uniformity: they all wore similar robes, of course, but were all of different aged and had all different styles of facial hair (I guess I had assumed that there would be some sort of strictures for how the priests should be bearded).  At many points during the service, the people crossed themselves, and sometimes bowed all the way to the floor, but I couldn't exactly find a rhyme or reason to it.  There was also a bit of call-and-response on the part of the choir: the priest would read part of a prayer and the singers would respond Господи помоги, Господи помоги, Господи помоги нам, which, being translated, is "Lord help, Lord help, Lord help us."  Once, the priests recited something and most of the members of the congregation joined in; there must be some prayers that everyone is supposed to learn by heart.  Overall, it was different in action from a service at Calvary Chapel, but perhaps not so far off in spirit; I could still feel the presence of the Lord in that place and I am sure that there are many people who worship from the bottom of their hearts in the only way they know how through this church.  But I am glad that I nearly always understand what my pastor is saying (I am fairly sure that the majority of the service was conducted in Old Church Slavonic, which is no longer used or even understood by most Russians).
• Tatyana repeated many times over both before and during the service that I could leave when I got tired or bored, or at least sit down on the benches that are on the side for the elderly members of the congregation who physically cannot stand on their feet for the entire 90 minutes, as is required since there are no other seats in the cathedral.  But I chose to stand the entire time, wishing to have the full experience of a Russian Orthodox service.  For that Tatyana was very proud of me afterwards, and kept telling me how wonderful it was that I stayed for the entire time.  I feel like I have a new grandmother now - T.T. seems to be proud of me for almost everything, from my progress in Russian (we can actually hold decent and lengthy conversations on a select few subjects) to my mediocre cooking skills to things like this.  I will, indeed, miss her when I return to America, and may even endeavor to write her a letter every now and again (international calling is nearly out of the question because of the cost and time difference, and she doesn't use a computer).  Anyway, on our way out of the cathedral we saw an ambulance parked outside; apparently one of the older churchgoers had fallen and hurt herself pretty severely on her way out.  Incidentally, I only saw older women at the service; the oldest man there was probably the priest, and the oldest male worshiper couldn't have been over 50.  I wonder why that is - I'm sure past a certain age you would still find the effects of WWII and the Siege of Leningrad, when more than 1.5 million citizens of the city died, and the men of that generation became very scarce.  Or perhaps it is that men who grew up in the Soviet era tend to be less religious than the women, or perhaps the women live longer for any of several reasons.  But it was a striking fact.
• After church, we went to the local grocery store for bread and milk, then returned to the apartment for breakfast.  It being my last weekend in St. Petersburg, I decided to visit the Hermitage with Latalia again (which, unfortunately, I had only visited once before during my time here, which is not nearly enough time to appreciate the vast collection of art in this extravagant 5-building complex).  This time I brought my borrowed camera and took pictures of some of the interiors and works, so that I can show you all a little of the splendor of Russia.  Of course, it won't do it justice, but I can at least try :].  After that, I found a couple more of the souvenirs I hadn't managed to find the day before (namely a painting for my Aunt Shirley and a gift for my cousin Ben), then took a circuitous route back to the apartment in order to photograph the Bronze Horseman monument and the large ships that lay moored in the river: apparently Sunday commemorated the 310th anniversary of the founding of the Russian Navy, and the sailors were out en force.  I think my dad at least will appreciate the pictures of the big war ships - he will be able to tell me all about what they are for. :]  But the real reason for my roundabout way home was so that I could take a ride on the tram, which I had been wanting to do for a while.  I have now officially used every possible form of transportation here in St. Petersburg (a fact of which I am very proud) although I still prefer to walk, when it is possible.  
• Home again, I cooked supper, as I have been doing more and more often lately - cutlets, rice and vegetables.  While the food here is good, and filling, and hearty, I really miss American food... a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or a piece of bacon pizza... but now I'm drooling XD

And so passed my last weekend in St. Petersburg.  It's hard to imagine that I'm so close to the end... I've already been here for 7 weeks... I'm ready to come home. 

Thank God for Peanut Butter

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

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

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

Catching up on all the Things I Never Did

• On Saturday, Ksyusha and I had plans to meet at 2, but I didn't have anything to do until then, so I spent a lazy morning reading and studying every now and again.  At 1:00 I set out, and stopped by a Subway on my way to meet my friend in the city center.  The sandwich cost me $5, which is expensive by Russian standards, but it tasted like home.  In general, I have found that the American restaurant chains over here (although I've only been to McDonalds and Subway) taste the same as they do in America.  There is also a Baskin-Robbins on Nevsky Prospect (the main street in the city) that I'm very eager to try before I leave - the ice cream here is positively to die for.  It must be because the milk is so much thicker here than in the States (they have no conception of "skim" milk) but the ice cream is much more creamy and thick and overall delicious.  Anyway, to move on from my food fantasies...
• First, Ksyusha and I went to the Wax Museum.  There we saw Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Elizabeth the Beautiful, and many other famous figures with exaggerated superlatives attached to their names.  However, since there were only a few rooms in the museum, the entire affair only took us about 15 minutes.  It would have been a shame to end the excursion after such a brief period, so we decided to go to another museum.  Our next stop was Kunstkamera.
• Kunstkamera is the German word for art, but the museum actually consists of Peter the Great's collection of oddities and monstrosities, created to dispel superstitions about the workings of the human body.  There were lots of preserved fetuses in jars: at different stages of development, and with lots of different mutations.  It was, to say the least, gross.  Some of the exhibits were less appalling: like the two-headed calf, or the skeleton of Peter's Giant who was just under 7' 6".  On the first floor of the museum were displays of traditional artifacts from ancient cultures all around the world: North America, Siberia, India, China... it was an odd juxtaposition.
• After we had finished at Kunstkamera, it was still only 4:00, and we hadn't had nearly enough museum for the day :P so we traipsed next door to the Zoological Museum.  This was the real highlight of the day: I love animals of all kinds.  It was fascinating to see the skeleton of the blue whale and imagine what it would be like to come upon one while swimming in the ocean.  There were also several rather mediocre exhibits, like the stuffed dogs and cats and pigeons.  There were about 20 different pigeons - I guess a city like St. Petersburg would know about that... There was also a display of insects on the second floor, and it was really interesting for us to compare which species I was familiar with from New England, and which ones Ksyusha saw regularly in Russia.  Then we visited the live insect zoo, briefly - it wasn't as exciting as it sounds.  It consisted of about 15 cages of tarantulas, cockroaches, and beetles, and one scorpion.  I have a love-hate relationship with spiders: I'm terrified of them, yet they fascinate me.  Go figure.  
• While I was still wandering around the Zoological Museum, Aryeh called me to let me know that he and his friends would be meeting in about 30 minutes to eat supper together before heading over to the opera, for which I also had tickets.  So, unfortunately, I had to cut my visit short before beholding all of the wonders of the aquarium section - I dearly hope that I will have the chance to return before I leave the city for good.  I was hurrying home when Aryeh called back to say that plans had changed and the group would just meet at the theater about 45 minutes before the start of the performance, which was a good thing, since it takes 30 minutes to get to the theater.  Nonetheless, even with the extra time, I managed to be late, in the true Mills family fashion.  (Of course, I could use as an excuse that I had to change and make my own supper, as well as the 30-minute walk, and I only had a little over an hour before the meeting time...)
• When I finally arrived at the theater (well before the performance was due to start), I found out that the ticket that I bought was in the balcony above my other friends, due to some misinformation when I was buying my tickets.  However, I was able to talk to them before the show and during both intermissions (one between each of the three acts), so it wasn't so bad.  The opera was "Eugene Onegin," based on the epic poem by Pushkin and with a score written by Tchaikovsky.  It is the classic Russian opera, just as "Swan Lake" is the classic Russian ballet.  It was beautiful - the choreography and set design was fantastic, and the singers had such incredible range.  I knew better what to look for in an opera than a ballet, so I enjoyed and appreciated this much more than I did Swan Lake.  Also, it was once again in the Mariinsky theater, which is probably the most famous theater in Russia after the Bolshoy theater in Moscow.  So it was all around a very prestigious evening.  The opera lasted four hours, so it was nearly 11:30 by the time we finally headed home.  Naturally, I went straight to bed, it being already after midnight.  :P
• On Sunday I slept in - or tried to.  I finally got up at 8:30; because of the light, I really couldn't stay in bed any longer.  I used to sleep with a pillow over my face to make it darker in my room, but it has been far too hot for that the last several weeks.  Whether because of the heat, or my busy day on Saturday, I felt tired and without energy all day.  I ended up not going to church, and I didn't even leave the apartment until 2pm, when I set out in search of lunch.  However, this turned out to be a dismal failure: the restaurant that I had my heart set on going to was closed for renovations.  Not to be deterred, I set out to find a bus that would take me to the part of town where I knew another restaurant in the same chain was located.  However, I had a horrible time finding a bus that went where I wanted it to: at every bus stop there is a sign telling which buses stop there, but not every sign shows the route of said buses.  As a result, when I finally managed to find a bus that was headed in the right direction, I had already been walking for 30 minutes.  I then proceeded to wait for another 30 minutes for the correct bus to come; by that time I could have walked to the other restaurant and back.  But, at long last, I arrived at the restaurant: only to pay more for my lunch than I expected and not enjoy it nearly as much.  It was, plain and simple, a failure.  So I consoled myself with a milkshake from McDonalds and took the metro to Peter and Paul's Fortress, where I visited the Wax Museum.  Here were, again, the Russian Czars, but also Peter I's giant, Dostoevsky, Lenin, Pushkin, and various other uppity-ups who had been imprisoned in the fortress dungeon at various points in Russia's clouded history.  
• After my miserably failed excursion, I returned home and made myself an equally dismal supper of rice with a carrot salad.  The Russian idea of a salad confuses me - they seem to think that grating one vegetable and mixing it with half a cup of mayonnaise counts as healthy.  However, the carrots are good, and I'm desperate for vegetables, so I don't complain.  
• The one redeeming factor of my Sunday was the fact that we found my host's DVD player.  Latalia had bought both Gone With The Wind and Beauty and the Beast in Russian, and this prompted me to look to see whether we could watch them.  It wasn't difficult to find the DVD player - it was in the bottom part of the TV stand, which Latalia didn't know opened.  So we watched a Disney cartoon in Russian - it was very interesting.  I understood a fair amount, but not as much as I wanted to - and for whatever reason we couldn't figure out how to make the display color, so we had to watch it in black-and-white.  (I later discovered that the DVD player was on the wrong display setting, and fixed it.)  But it was good to see something so American and childish, because I was bored and felt like doing anything but studying.  Also, it was funny to see how some of the lines in the movie were translated - my favorite song was Вы наш гост (can you guess? :])

So, my growing lethargy is probably evident in the belatedness of this blog post.  Hopefully today I can write another and catch you up a bit more, although I have to admit that my adventures have been rather fewer and farther between as of late...

The Long Road Back

Needless to say, last week was really hard for me.  Besides the strict emotional drain of having to deal with the loss of so many of my valuables, there were aftereffects.  For instance, I had to pay to have the locks on our apartment changed, even though there was nothing in my purse that could link it with my address, only the Nevsky Institute.  Also, I had to get a new ID card for the Institute, which took several days, so for most of the week I had to beg apologetically at the front desk for the ladies who monitored the entrance to let me in and out.  Understandably, I was in a funk for the rest of the week - the necessity of replacing several of the most important items that were in my purse brought back all of my worries about money.  In addition to this, my parents were (understandably) concerned about the possibility of identity theft - my mother kept inquiring over Facebook about what the thief could possibly do with the information he had about me; in my confusion, I couldn't remember whether my social security number had been in my wallet, or exactly what information he would have been able to glean off of copies of all of my documents, my driver's license and the information card that had been in my wallet.  To make matters worse, one of the professors, Professor Blank from Princeton, kept confronting me about everything that I would need to replace, and her manner was very brusque and unsympathetic - very typically Russian, but not what I needed at the time.  I feel that Stas, our other professor, would have tried harder to understand; and on top of it all, Professor Blank insisted on speaking to me in Russian, which was just about too much for my poor frazzled nerves.  Several times on Tuesday I burst into tears, and Professor Blank frantically tried to calm me, but she wasn't very effective.  As childish as it may sound, I was scared and upset and what I really wanted was my mother.  The fact that my phone had been one of the things stolen was icing on the cake: not only was I already several thousand miles away from home, I couldn't even call and hear a friendly voice.

Finally, some sense came out of the confusion: we decided that it was most necessary that I replace my phone and my keys: the rest could wait.  So, on Tuesday I went with Nadia, one of the program's coordinators, to get me a new cell phone.  We went to the store nearby and she asked for their cheapest model, explaining that I would only be in the country for another 2 weeks, so quality wasn't a big issue.  They replied that the one they had came in black or white - then one of the salesmen added that they also had pink ones.  On a whim, I replied - "I want the pink one."  When it came out, it was every bit as hideous as I imagined; I hate pink, as a rule.  Yet somehow the ludicrous appearance of my phone cheered me up more than anything else had been able to do yet. As an added bonus, the store clerk said that the phone might be able to work in the States with another SIM card, and when I inquired about Germany (I'm planning to do a similar, though shorter, program next summer in Germany), he responded that it was even more likely.  So perhaps my purchase isn't for naught, after all.  Also, I paid only 1040 rubles (about $35) and got 350 rubles on the SIM card, which, at the tariff rates over here, should be more than enough to last me the remaining two weeks, so at least I won't have to invest any more money in the phone.

To make matters worse, the heat wave continued with gusto this week: Saint Petersburg hasn't had weather like this in 40 years, so of course air conditioners are in short supply.  Why would you need them when a typical year sees about 30 days of sun?  Our classroom at the institute was the worst - there is only one room that has an air conditioner in it, and even that doesn't help much, but the other is absolutely unbearable.  They tried bringing fans in, opening the windows and door to encourage a draft - nothing worked and we could hardly pay attention for the heat.  Latalia and I are quite fortunate with our apartment - it is larger and much cooler than most, but the heat eventually permeated even there, and I was having an incredibly difficult time sleeping for the heat and the humidity.  (I've never been able to sleep in a hot room - at Princeton it was nearly half a semester in the fall before I could sleep underneath even my sheets.)  I eventually put myself on a voluntary hot-water strike (hot water in the city is mostly centralized, a relic from Soviet times, so many neighborhoods in the city lose hot water for a two-week period in the summer so that the pipes can be cleaned - however, since we have our own hot-water heater, we are spared this inconvenience), taking freezing-cold showers every evening before bed in a desperate attempt to lower my body temperature and allow me to sleep, but to little avail.

The other torment of St. Petersburg, by virtue of its being a city built on a marsh, is the abundance of mosquitoes.  I thought they were bad in Maine, but here they have an entirely different breed.  I swear they are at least twice as large, and in my 8 x 25 room I can hear them buzzing no matter where they are.  They particularly seem to enjoy the damp climate of the bathroom; every time I went in there I would hear the ominous high-pitched whine.  It was especially torturous to take a shower.  It is a stand-up shower with sliding glass doors; hearing the buzzing start up upon closing the shower doors is like a little piece of hell.  And these mosquitoes take no prisoners: in Maine, they might buzz around you for a bit before landing.  Here, they literally dive-bomb your face.  I am not exaggerating: World War III nearly broke out in my apartment last week as I made a full-scale attack on the little monsters.  Every night, before I would go to bed, I would close my door and make up my bed, then lie awake and read my Bible, waiting for their inevitable attack.  Once I spotted one, I would follow it around the room until I was able to exterminate it, sometimes hunting for up to twenty minutes for a single mosquito.  But it was worth it; on the nights when I neglected this duty, I might wake up with as many as four or five bites on my face, arms, and legs, not to mention being woken up at ungodly hours by the buzzing in my ear.

The bright spot of my week was Wednesday.  I met my other new Russian friend, Ksenia (Ksyusha for short) and we went on a boat tour of the canals and rivers of St. Petersburg.  The bridges were beautiful, but made me miss my camera even more sharply, and since the tour was in Russian, I only understood about 30%.  However, Ksyusha lent me her camera and promised to email me the pictures, and the tour probably wouldn't have been all that interesting anyway (who actually cares when all of the bridges were built?) so it wasn't that bad.  After the tour, Ksyusha asked me when I would next be free and then told me that she would get in touch on Friday about plans for the weekend.  After the sporadic or nonexistant communication from my previous Russian friend, this eagerness to hang out came as a pleasant surprise.  In addition, Mom called me on Wednesday evening and assuaged my fears about money and such.  It was wonderful to talk to her again.
But, most of my week went more like this.  The combination of the heat and the emotional stress of the recent events made everything seem like a bigger deal than it actually was.  Tatyana didn't come home on Sunday night, which was actually quite a common occurrence (I believe that, were she not hosting Latalia and I, she would spend much more time at the dacha than she currently does); we made ourselves supper and thought little of it.  However, when she still hadn't returned by Monday afternoon, we began to wonder, especially since the food supply in the refrigerator was running low (it seems that Russians go shopping much more often than Americans and leave less in the fridge; I know that at least in my family the refrigerator and freezer are always over-full).  Finally, Latalia got a call from Olga, explaining that she had tried to call me several times with no success (for obvious reasons) and that she would be over in about twenty minutes to cook us supper.  I was relieved, especially since I wasn't sure whether anyone in the family yet knew about what had happened with my purse.  As I suspected, Olga didn't know, and was shocked and sympathetic when I told her.  I heard her talking to her mom on the phone later that night, letting her know, so at least that problem was solved.  She then assured us that T.T. would be home the next afternoon, which news Latalia and I received gladly.  In hindsight, there was nothing to worry about in the situation, but at the time I was nearly in hysterics, not knowing where my host was or whether she knew what had happened.

Other little things were also easily blown out of proportion; the new lock, changed on Wednesday, doesn't work nearly as well as the old one.  Instead of automatically latching when the door is closed, it is necessary to use the key to lock the door behind yourself; and if the lock isn't put in exactly the right position it becomes impossible to open from the outside, even with the key.  However, I finally received a new set of keys on Thursday morning, for which I should be grateful, since it relieves Latalia of the burden of making sure she is home when I need to get into the apartment.

Also, the problem of finding a camera for Moscow has turned out to be quite an ordeal in its own right.  It's very important for me to have pictures to commemorate my time there - in all probability, I will never return to this country, much less that city.  Emily, one of my traveling companions, graciously offered to share her pictures with me, but I tend to have (thanks to Nikola) a rather unique taste in photography, and I really want to be able to take my own pictures.  It seems that disposable cameras are a rare thing in this city - no one seems to know where I can find one.  I search the souvenir stands each time I walk by; occasionally I see batteries, but have yet to find a disposable camera.  I've tried camera stores, as well, and was told that while they carry them in general, the particular outlets where I inquired didn't have any.  I debated asking Mom to send me one from the States, but was eventually convinced that the cost of shipping would outweigh the value of the camera, and the uncertainty of receiving it in time made it completely not worth anyone's while.  I even considered buying a good-quality new digital camera here, but quickly discovered that it would be significantly more expensive than in the States, and I have no wish to make such a purchase hastily.  I've heard rumors that the souvenir store at the Hermitage has disposable cameras; at this point I am willing to pay the exorbitant prices that I am sure I shall find there, just to have a camera.

On Thursday we had another of our infamous "excursions."  We have had several of these field trips throughout the program; they usually consist of a tour of some museum or palace, and tend to be less than entertaining.  Last week was a walking tour of the neighborhood where the action of Crime and Punishment takes place.  We spent more than two hours wandering the streets of one of the dirtiest and poorest neighborhoods in St. Petersburg, hearing about how it was in this very building that Raskolnikov, the main character in the novel, did such-and-such, or how we needed to get into the spirit of squalor and depression that characterized the neighborhood in Dostoevsky's time.  We got into the spirit, all right - the tour was hot, tiring, too long, and none too interesting.  I inconveniently kept remembering that all of these places we saw were where fictional characters carried out fictional actions and therefore nothing had ever really happened "in this very building." :P

However, on Friday the weather finally broke.  The sky clouded over and thundered and threatened all day, although the actual rainfall was little and the storms were nothing like the fury of those of a few weeks previous.  Also, I finished The Jungle last week - I'm sure that that most depressing of books was not helping my mood any, and no longer having an iPod to distract myself with meant that I read even more than I might otherwise have done.  In addition, I had an unusually long and interesting conversation with T.T. after supper on Friday, discussing our various beliefs and opinions (although such conversations always leave me a bit frustrated and unsatisfied with my limited Russian vocabulary).  So, the week wasn't all bad.  On top of this, Ksyusha texted me on Friday and we made plans to visit the Wax Museum, one of the items on my list of things to do before leaving St. Petersburg, on Saturday.  So I also had something to look forward to for the weekend.  It's a good thing, too - being depressed always drains the energy out of me, and it's very difficult for me to maintain a bad mood for very long.  :]

You Can't Win Them All

So, Sunday was the day that changed the course of my summer.  It was so traumatic, it's taken me nearly a week to be able to write about it.  But here it is, at last, in all of its raw detail.  (I'm only being slightly dramatic - you'll see why...)

• In the morning, I went to church as usual.  The sermon was on the last two chapters of Revelation - next week I assume that they will begin again in Matthew, since Sundays we always study the New Testament.  The pastor is leaving for a 3-week car trip with his family, however, so for the next few Sundays one of the elders will be teaching.
• After church, I stopped by MacDonald's to grab an ice-cream cone, as the heat was still quite unbearable.  I had been invited back to Kavgalava with some of my friends, but I had also made plans with my new Russian friend, Zarina, and I figured that that should take precedence.  So I traipsed over to Nevsky Prospect, and, as she texted me that she was running a bit late, I sat down to wait on a bench outside Kazansky Cathedral.  After about fifteen minutes, a slim, dark-haired girl in a white tank top and shorts walked up to me and inquired, "Erin?"  I could tell already that I was going to enjoy her company more than that of my previous Russian friend; she had a friendly, energetic aspect to her that reminded me suspiciously of someone else I know (here's a hint: she fairly bounced and was always smiling).  As we had agreed to meet for lunch, she began inquiring as to where I wanted to go.  And as I had no specific preferences, we decided to opt for the quickest and most convenient option - McDonalds.  This turned out to be our fateful decision.
• At McDonalds we ran into my roommate, Latalia, and her friend Salina, they having just come from the Hermitage.  The restaurant was unbelievably crowded (think about it - it is the biggest tourist restaurant on the biggest tourist street in one of the biggest tourist cities in Russia in the summertime on a weekend.) so they offered to give us their seats, since they were about to leave.  We decided that this would be a good idea - Zarina went up to order for us and I saved the seat.  I wanted to tell her to save the receipts, so that we could be reimbursed for our purchase through the Russian Friend program, so I pulled out my dictionary (which I had fortuitously thought to bring with me) to look up the word.  Having finished that, and not wanting my bulky and somewhat grungy purse on the table or in my lap, I placed it beneath the stool on which I sat, between my feet.  Soon Zarina returned with our food and we fell to eating and conversing.  I had ordered a Ceasar roll (but, unlike in America, this was an actual meal instead of merely a snack) but no drink, since I had a water bottle in my purse.  I took a few bites of my food, then was thirsty, so I reached down for my water - and felt nothing.  Thinking that strange, I looked down - at the dirty linoleum floor.  My purse wasn't where I had left it.  I got down from the stool (which was too high for my feet to touch the floor while I sat on it) and looked around, sure that it had gotten moved or kicked by someone.  But no; the tattered black bag was nowhere to be seen.  
• Seeing my consternation, Zarina asked, "What's the matter?"  I muttered, "My purse - it was right here - I don't know where it's got to" (as usual, in much simplified Russian).  At this she looked a bit alarmed, and we both peered under the counter, hoping that we had somehow missed it, although there was no place for it to be hiding.  Then the awful realization hit me: my purse had been stolen.I was so shocked I could hardly think coherently - I kept looking around, desperately trying to find it tucked away in some corner.  We stopped a few employees, asking them if they'd seen a black purse - but they were all in a hurry, and quickly answered in the negative, and asked why I hadn't kept it on my shoulder as I should have.  When it became clear that there was nothing we could do, no one we could ask who could miraculously produce the object in question, I began the long, difficult process of resigning myself to the fact that nearly everything that I had with me had suddenly been taken away, and that I would never see it again.  I choked down the rest of my lunch - even in such a time, I couldn't bear to waste food.  Then, stunned and feeling naked without any of my belongings, we left the restaurant, me craning my neck this way and that, searching the arms of everyone we passed as well as every bit of the floor and all of the corners in the desperate hope that I might still recover something - anything!
• I didn't have pockets in my dress, so literally everything was in my purse.  In addition to the expensive things - my camera, iPod, cell phone, wallet - I also had in there my dictionary, Bible, city map, swimsuit and towel (I was planning to swim later), copies of all of my documents (passport, visa, registration), student discount card, apartment keys, Institute ID card, driver's license, health insurance card, water bottle, pens, hand lotion, sunscreen, chapstick... everything. :[
•  Shell-shocked and morose, I walked numbly down Nevsky Prospect behind Zarina.  When she suggested that we go into a museum, I agreed, but without any conviction - my mind was still several blocks away, back at the McDonalds.  The museum turned out to be Строгановский дворец or Stroganoff's palace - the home of one of the largest and richest families in St. Petersburg.  The rooms were, as usual, splendorous (my official new favorite English word :]), especially the hall where one wall consisted entirely of mirrors.  There were half-chandeliers and half-pillars attached to the mirrors, so that it appeared that they were completely round, and the effect was that although the entrance to the hall was in this wall, it appeared that you had walked into a room twice the size.  Very interesting.  The rooms were definitely the most interesting thing in this palace - the artifacts on display were mediocre at best, especially as compared to the Hermitage and the other museums I have thus far visited.  But I could not look at the splendor of the furnishings without wishing that I had my camera to take pictures, which would remind me that I had had it until a few minutes ago, which would once again set me to brooding.  I did my best to keep a cheerful countenance, however, especially as I could see that Zarina was trying extra-hard to cheer me up and I didn't wish to make a bad impression by moping the entirety of our first meeting.
• After the museum, Zarina asked whether I would like to go to a park.  My answer was the same as I gave for nearly everything that day, a slightly bitter, "Почему нет?" (Why not?)  And so we rode the metro to the south end of the city and wandered the park there for a while, sitting on the grassy bank of some pond or other and chatting in Russian.  We worked on getting acquainted, and I surprised myself at how easily I was still able to produce Russian, though my thoughts were mostly elsewhere.  We sat there for a couple of hours, and when we decided that we had baked enough in the sun, Zarina offered to take me back to her place.  It had come up in conversation that I didn't have any other sort of bag that would be appropriate for carrying my schoolbooks, which was a legitimate problem.  Zarina (bless her!) quickly piped up and explained that she had an old, extra purse that she would be more than willing to let me have.  Thus we decided to travel to her apartment so that she could give it to me and so that I could access the Internet and let the most important people know of my situation.  It turned out that she lived a good 15-minute walk past the last metro station on the blue line - which meant that she was several miles from the city center.  Her neighborhood consisted mostly of tall apartment complexes that had presumably been built since the fall of the Soviet Union, and her apartment was on the 10th floor of one of these buildings.  There we collectively consumed nearly an entire watermelon, we were both so hot and thirsty.  Then I emailed my mother and Anna B-, the program assistant, to let them know what had transpired, and particularly that my phone had been stolen, so they might save themselves the trouble of trying to call.  When I opened my email, I saw that I had a message from the OA Freshman Camping Trip coordinator, informing me that for the area in which I would be leading a trip, they needed to have my driver's license number.  I laughed aloud at the irony of this - my driver's license had been in my wallet, too.  By the time I finished, it was already nearly 7:00, and I was a good hour's travel from my apartment with no way to let anyone know where I was (who memorizes phone numbers anymore?  They had all been in my phone), so I decided that I had better head back as soon as possible.  So, with some parting words of encouragement and caution, Zarina handed me my new purse and pressed a hundred-ruble note into my hand, despite my protests.  "Anything could happen," she insisted, although I was thinking with a wry smile that if this purse was stolen, too, the 100 rubles really wouldn't help me that much.  
• And so I returned home, in much lower spirits than I had left that morning.  I first tried the McDonalds again, in a vain hope that perhaps the thief had returned the bag after removing all of the valuable items (what I would have given even to recover my dictionary, or towel, or city map at that moment - or even my pen or sunscreen!).  But it was to no avail - I stopped an employee and inquired whether anything had been found, or whether there was anyone I could ask, but she only replied that they had cameras, but they probably hadn't caught anything, and that if my passport was stolen I would need to go to the police.  Thus I walked home with heavy steps, still struggling to accept the fact which my mind had repeatedly rejected - it just couldn't be!
• Now, I've lost things before, but I can't remember the last time that something was actually stolen from me.  (Unless you count my bike during the first week of classes at Princeton - but it was found three weeks later by Public Safety, and it really isn't worth more than $30, so I guess it doesn't really count.)  Growing up in small-town Maine, it's just not something we ever worry about.  In fact, I'm notoriously lax about security - I often forget to lock my vehicle, even leaving the keys in it more often than not when I go into a store or theater.  Even after my bike was stolen last year, I rarely locked it up - usually only at night.  Whether that displays a naive trust in people or is just laziness, I'll let you decide.  I call it "calculated risk." :] So when I had to accept the fact that my purse was stolen - stolen, my entire purse - it was something that I had never had to deal with before.  Poor Zarina - I was exceptionally distracted for the rest of the afternoon, as every few minutes I would remember another thing that had been in my purse, and begin to lament my stupidity all over again.  But I really hadn't been all that stupid, and that's what bothered me most.  I hadn't left my purse in the bathroom, or walked away from it, or even left it on the next chair over, or hanging behind - it had been under my very feet!  While Zarina and I were still in the restaurant, discussing what we could do next, we witnessed a young couple sit down directly across from us and immediately place her purse and his backpack on the floor between them, before they commenced gazing star-struck into each others' eyes.  Seeing them do exactly as I had done - place their bags on the floor and not pay attention to them - was the hardest blow.  Why did I deserve to have everything stolen from me, and not them?  They were making the same mistake, and only a few minutes separated our fates - why me, and not them?  
• But, to quote the poet Lord Alfred Tennyson, "ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die."  I don't know why my purse was stolen that day, when God could easily have protected me from all of the fear and uncertainty and heartache and inconvenience.  I'm sure I don't even know how many times He has rescued me before from even worse things.  The only thing I can be certain of is that He has a good plan - that "all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose" (Rom. 8:28).  There was a reason that that happened to me, and that it happened there, and then, though I can't see it, and may never be able to.  I can only look for reasons to praise Him in and through the situation, and trust that it will, in the end, work for good, as He promised. 
• And it isn't as difficult as I first thought to find the good in the situation: my passport and ATM card were not in my purse that day.  In the big picture, nothing that I lost is irreplaceable, and those two items would have given the most hassle, had I lost them.  It was a simple matter to make another copy of my passport, visa and such; and although I had had 1100 rubles in my wallet, that still only amounts to about $30.  I still have access to the rest of my money, which I would not have had, had I been forced to cancel my bank card because it had been stolen.  I didn't have a credit card, either - all that the thief got is the collective value of the items in my purse, nothing more.  My iPod? - not something I absolutely need, and it was already 2 years old and beginning to lose its battery capacity, anyway.  At least now I can't procrastinate from my homework by playing Solitaire on it (although if I get really desperate, I have a pack of cards in my desk... ;])  My camera? - a much dearer loss, but it had been just that morning that I had changed the SD card because the first was full, so I still have nearly 600 pictures from the trip thus far, 600 irreplaceable memories of friends made and adventures had.  And all in all, it had been a $100 camera that was already a year old, together with a 3-year-old $20 SD card and a $5 pair of rechargeable batteries.  Nothing I can't work for a week or two and replace.  All of the other items were mere trifles - my ugly 2-piece swimsuit, my well-worn city map, a $20 cell phone, $15 dictionary (there's also another English-Russian dictionary in my room, courtesy of a previous student), $6 Russian Bible - who knows, maybe he'll read it?  That would make the entire escapade worth it, in the long run.  There were a few things I would miss - the loss of my apartment keys, although there was nothing in my purse that would expressly link me with my St. Petersburg address, necessitated a changing of the locks that I would have to pay for :P.  I would need a new Nevsky ID card in order to gain access to the building, a new Student Discount card in order to get into the museums for a cheaper price, etc.  But all told, as Anna B- remarked to me later, "This really went as well as it could have, all things considered."  And now, I have a new purse, courtesy of my wonderful Russian friend Zarina, one which isn't likely to give out before the end of the program, and which has leather handles that won't blacken every article of clothing I own, as my other did, to my constant irritation.

Now, you must understand that such a positive outlook on the situation is only the result of a long, hard week of thinking and crying and struggling to understand, why such an awful thing would happen when I was finally beginning to enjoy myself here.   I'm not super-human; just a naive and sensitive little country-girl who is justifiably proud of herself when she manages to take the right bus all on her own.  What's made this experience especially difficult is that it happened in a foreign country - in America all of these things would be simple to replace, but over here the prospect of trying to buy a new camera or phone is positively daunting.  There's a silver lining, even in that, however - the thief has a great deal of my personal information (whatever he could glean from a copy of my passport, visa, registration, and driver's license) and, in the States, there would be a legitimate concern about identity theft.  However, my American permanent address and driver's license number aren't likely to help him much over here, and there is probably little that he can realistically do with a photocopy of a 19-year-old woman's American passport.  Still, it was a frightening experience, all told, and my view of humanity is a bit more jaded now.  But I've learned my lesson, and I'm determined not to let it ruin my summer!  So there!

*In case you think I'm being stereotypical by referring to the thief always as "he", let me just explain that when I sat down at the stool, there was a youngish man sitting beside me - I didn't pay much attention to him, because I had no reason to.  But he was the only one close enough to me to have taken my purse without my noticing - the back of the stool was a few feet from a wall and the kitchen door, and I would have seen someone passing by who bent down to grab it.  Thus, I'm not being sexist by assuming that it was a man - just realistic, unfortunately.  :P

The Fatalist

If you want an apt, albeit exaggerated and symbolic, description of my weekend, you can go read this short story by M. Lermontov: The Fatalist.  I'll tell you why it's so appropriate.

• On Friday I was still feeling a bit down, but when some of the girls in my group announced that they were going to a movie after school and anyone who wanted to come was welcome, I jumped at the chance to hang out with my friends.  And so we went and saw Twilight: Eclipse.  I don't think I've ever seen a more pointless movie, in any language.  I am very sorry for those of you who love Twilight: I just don't think that it was a good movie.  The upside is that it was a good movie to watch in Russian, because the plot line wasn't complicated at all and I was able to understand almost all of what was going on.  I do intend to watch all three of the movies, eventually, when I get back to the States: however, I don't hold out much hope that they will be much better in English than in Russian.
• After the movie, I hurried back home to wolf down some supper before heading out again, this time to meet some other members of the group for a concert.  This was a performance of the Men's Choir of St. Petersburg in the Peter and Paul's fortress.  Anna B- had thought that the performance was in the actual cathedral, and indeed it used to be, but when we went it was in another, much less impressive building.  Nonetheless, the choir was as good as Anna promised.  Russia is famous for its exceptionally low bass singers, and they were out in all of their glory at the concert.  Some of the notes they sang were so low that they literally shook the walls of the room wherein we sat!!  I thought of my friend from Princeton, Griffin Telljohann - he's a bass too, though slightly less impressive in his range (but only slightly ^.^)  The performance strongly reminded me of Princeton A Capella; all we needed was a stone arch (and those weren't in short supply in the fortress ;]).  It also made me think of the hours of choir practice I sat through in Belgrade (and those memories aren't quite as pleasant as the former :P)  The first half of the concert consisted of traditional religious songs, and the second was all folk music.  The religious music was all very somber and slow, but the folk songs were lively and made me want to get up and dance - I could just imagine such a group dressed in furs, sitting around a fire and singing these songs on a cold winter's evening, many centuries ago.  
• On Saturday, we went to Pushkin, a suburb of St. Petersburg, to tour Catherine's Palace at Czarskoe Selo.  It was absolutely gorgeous, as have been all of the palaces we have visited.  Fortunately, we didn't have to meet quite as early as we had for our trip to Novgorod: our rendezvous was at 10:20 at one of the most southernly metro stations.  From there we took a marshrutka to Pushkin - once again, I forgot my motion-sickness candy, but I didn't end up needing it - and I even read on the way there!!  I started The Jungle by Upton Sinclair - I have never read a more depressing novel.  It's like A Series of Unfortunate Events, except not in the least amusing.  I only recommend that this book be read under duress (for example, as summer reading for an AP English course) or if one feels it necessary to be in an exceptionally dour mood for the next week.  I honestly don't know if I can finish it without falling into a serious bout of depression.  Fortunately, the marshrutka ride was only about 20 minutes long, so I was spared from too much dwelling on the misery of the human condition.  We arrived at the palace complex before 11, but it was another hour before our tour guide showed up and she had to fill out some forms before we could actually begin.  Once we finally entered the palace, those of us with larger bags (which definitely included me) were required to check them.  I considered taking my camera out, but I wouldn't have had anywhere else to put it, and I was under the impression that photography within the palace was only allowed upon purchase of a ticket, as it is in many other museums we have visited.  Unfortunately, I was wrong, so I didn't get the chance to capture any of the splendor of the interiors.  Perhaps I can convince some of the other people in my group to let me get a copy of their photos.  
• The most splendorous (wow, that's actually a word) room in the palace was undoubtedly the world-renowned Amber Room.  In this room nearly every inch of wall space is covered with a mosaic of the fossilized resin; even picture frames and bas-reliefs are made of it!  It is absolutely incredible (as well as being the one room in the palace where photographs are forbidden).  
• After our tour of the palace, we explored the park a bit and learned more than any of us ever wanted to know about its history.  Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful to Anna's friend who took time out of her day to come lead the tour for us, but her English was slow and laborious, and by the time we reached the park it was already past 1, and we were all hot and tired and hungry.  We were more than glad when we reached the end of the park and it was finally time for lunch (by which time it was nearly 2:30, and Latalia and I had eaten breakfast at 8!!)  Lunch was a picnic, courtesy of Princeton University - ham and cheese sandwiches on various types of bread, cucumbers, and cherries.  It was one of the best picnics I have had in a long while - probably because we were so hungry by the time we began.  
• After the picnic, our excursion was officially over, so our group split and went their separate ways.  I ended up wandering with Mykola, Andrew, Hayk, Ian, and the Russian friends of Mykola and Andrew (later I realized that I was the only American girl there, but I couldn't leave the poor Russians to fend for themselves with those crazy boys!! :])  We explored the carriage trails that criss-crossed the park, wandering with no ultimate goal in mind - and very nearly got ourselves thoroughly lost.  I was very jealous of the mountain-bikers that I saw (I haven't had any exercise besides walking all summer :P).  We found some really cool old abandoned brick buildings, as well as a high stone bridge which we climbed and explored.  It was good just to hang out with some friends, and I felt that (besides the lake the week before) this was the first time I had done so since arriving.  
• Then it was back home to finish my weekend homework.  T.T. called to say that she would be back the next morning (as usual) and that we should make ourselves supper, which we did of blini.  I had heard that the girls in the group might be planning to hang out in the evening, but either the plans never materialized or no one thought to call me.  Not to be faced with another long evening of studying, however, I decided to stay up until the bridges rose (which happens between 1:30 and 2am, depending on the bridge) and take pictures of this most characteristic St. Petersburg phenomenon.  Not wanting to do homework until that time, I also decided that I would wander around my island until it was closer to the time for them to be raised.  So at about 9:30 I left my apartment and struck out northward, planning to explore the three less-inhabited northern islands for a while.  En route, I ran into Qaiocu (pronouned "Chao-Choo"- I don't know if I spelled it correctly, but it looks much cooler in Cyrillic - as do so many other things...) and she decided to accompany me for a while.  Since she lives on the more northernly part of my island, she has wandered this area quite a bit, and she could tell me what I would find there and where to go.  We wandered across the first of the northern islands, which consists of mostly well-to-do newer neighborhoods and apartment complexes, some of them gated communities, as well as St. Petersburg's amusement parks.  Then we crossed to the smallest of the three islands, Yelagin Ostrov, which consists entirely of a park (Central Park of Culture and Rest).  We stayed there for a while, exploring the wooded trails of the park, then Qaiocu set off for home - she wanted to be back by 11:30 and it was already 10:50 by this point.  I sat on a bench and read for a while, but had to leave before midnight because that's when the park gates close.  The White Nights are basically over, but it's still quite something that I can sit on a bench at 11:30 pm and have enough light to read a book!  
• So, it was after this, when I was wandering slowly across Petrogradsky Island towards the bridges which would open at 1:30, that I realized just how dangerous was the situation in which I found myself.  I was: 1) a 19-year-old 2) female 3) walking alone 4) past midnight 5) on a weekend night 6) in a large city 7) in a foreign country 8) where I didn't speak the language very well 9) in a part of town that I had never been before.  However, by the time I realized this, I was already equidistant from both my apartment and the bridges; it made just as much sense to continue as it would have to return home and wait until the bridges rose.  So I continued, stopping into a 24-hour produkti for a candy bar to bolster my energy. 
• Fortunately, the night progressed without incident, and the bridges were truly something to see - it was definitely worth it.  At least I conclusively discovered that it gets dark at night - but all of the bridges are bedecked with plenty of lights.  I got some great pictures before returning to my apartment and crawling into bed at 2:45.

And now, since I haven't even gotten to the most exciting part of my weekend and already another is upon us, I shall sign off for the present, hoping to complete my tale soon, in another post.