Synogogue, cucumbers

I'm eating a cucumber that I think is from the дача dacha. I've been finding cucumbers in the fridge and on the table. If I don't keep up, they accumulate, so I've been eating them at odd hours.

We visited the Grand Choral Synagogue on Tuesday. It was surprisingly light...especially after seeing so many orthodox churches which all share a certain architectural style, necessary to support onion domes, which results in a rather dim setting. After the tour, I found a store that sells kosher food, including kosher meat. This was a great triumph...I bought some beef jerky. Apparently, there's a kosher restaurant nearby which I didn't bump into, but maybe I'll have a chance to go back.

With only a week and a half left, people are starting to get antsy about cramming in as many things as possible before our departure. Actually, I don't know if anyone but myself feels this way, but I assume they do. Anyway, I'm determined to have some sort of activity after school tomorrow...restaurant, bar, or museum. Or even just park sitting somewhere in the city center. It's easy to fall into the trap of walking home after school, doing homework, and then being too tired to leave the island. Takes some effort.

On the way home from the museum, I sat with a few people in a park/square with a statue of Rimsky-Korsokav. He's got quite the beard. It's nice to be in a place where around any corner, there's a good chance of happening upon a statue of a famous composer. Or more likely, Lenin.

Новгород aftermath

Internet is back at home! Hooray! I just returned from our trip to Новгород Novgorod and had some dinner. It was fun and successful trip...not quite so far away as Псков Pskov, so the bus ride was less sweaty, and we are back in time for the evening to function as an evening.

Saturday was spent on a very long tour of the city, which made the rounds to all of the historic monuments and churches. Definitely the highlight for me was a dip in Река Волхов the Volkhov River! A very rapidly flowing river indeed.

This morning, we visited a monastery located fifteen minutes from the city center next to a lake. One of the monks gave us a quick tour of their main church and moved us along to the exit. I really liked it there...though perhaps the flowers die and shrivel after the summer, I'm sure the winter is idyllic in its own dark and frigid way. I guess I don't really have any interest in becoming an Orthodox monk, though, so they'll probably never let me visit for more than a few minutes.

I've been practicing (violin) more lately. A few days after I started playing on the street, I began to look at some new Bach, and now, all of the sudden, I've been practicing regularly. Funny how quickly one can snap back into old habits. Must be like hell to quit something that's chemically addictive.

в Новгород to Novgorod

Tomorrow morning, we will pile on to a bus for our trip to Новгород Novgorod, a very old city south of St. Petersburg. So I won't have internet for the weekend, but that won't be so noticeable as it might have been before.

Yesterday, I went on a run for a couple of miles. I finished at around 10:00, used the bathroom, then realized that I ought to run some more. So I ran to visit three friends on the next island, called Petrograd, and we sat next to a canal and played a Russian card game that we all only sort of know how to play. They only live a few miles away, but it takes a while to walk and requires a metro transfer, so I tend to hang around with my neighbors instead. But running, it only takes 25 minutes. So I think I'll try that again some time.

наталья Natalia, my host mother, is beginning to trust me a bit with the house. I was allowed to help with dishes the other day. And she leaves me home more often now...she's not around very much between trips to the dentist and the дача dacha, summer house. So now, whenever she's gone for a few days, I'm supposed to call her in the evening and say how my day went and confirm that no one robbed the house.

I found myself starting to plan the two weeks that I'll have at home after I get back. Strange to think that we'll be wrapping things up soon. I'm going to try to get some recipes from наталья Natalia to take home and to school.

busking

Posting again from school! In a little bit we are leaving for an excursion to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. I'm hoping that they will be selling a copy of the movie "Alexander Nevsky"...I remember it being hard to find in the states.

I think I may have finally found an area of the city that works for students. It is tricky to find places that aren't expensive and fancy, and at the same time, not chains from the US, here. So it has taken a bit of exploring and investigation to find the right balance. After today's excursion, I'm planning to go with a couple people to a cafe a few blocks off of the main street.

I mentioned in the last post that I've been playing violin for money. This has turned out to be a good decision not only because I have some extra cash, but also, people come up and talk to me all of the time. For the first time, I've gotten to talk rather extensively with people who don't speak any English. Most of my encounters with Russians have been with people in the service industry or academia, and most of these people have been multilingual to some extent. So I've been setting up next to my metro, in a largely residential area, and people pass me by on their way home from work or whatever. Some people request certain songs, one fellow gave me a CD of himself, and lots of people want to know where I'm from.

If anyone thinks of anything I should buy here, tell me so! It will be too late once I leave in three weeks. It gets legit dark around 1am these days...strange.

internet gone again

Internet is gone again...which explains the prolonged silence of this blog. I'll try to post when I can, but I'd really rather not spend any of my time in Russia in the McDonald's, the most reliable source of wireless. But internet will probably return to my apartment soon, it always does, I just don't know when.

I'm making lots of money playing violin on the street!

home alone

Quick post because I have a bunch of work to do. It's 1am and fairly dark out. I've been watching the White Nights fade, but in the last couple of days it has been particularly noticeable.

I'm home alone again, a relatively frequent occurrence. My host mom Наталья Natalia is at the дача dacha, or summer house, and Наташа Natasha is either working late or with Саша Sasha, I'm never sure which.

My situation seems to be fairly unique. Most people in the program are doing their best to accommodate host moms who need to always know when they will be home, what they are doing, and etc. Наталья Natalia is also this way, but she's just not there a good chunk of the time. So I come and go as I please.

We watched the bridges go up again this weekend. At around 1:30am, all of the bridges over Река Нева the Neva River go up to let ships through. The bridges and buildings along the shore are illuminated against the fading natural light, creating a surreal and unforgettable effect. On a Saturday night, the streets are packed with people watching the bridges and street performers, moving between clubs, and soaking in the fleeting warmth of summer.

mall & jazz

I just returned from a long trip to the mall. The mall is not so different from American malls. However, I'm glad that most of my day was spent at a mall because we were with some Russian friends. For those interested in precision and accuracy, our group consisted of two Americans, one Israeli, and two Russians. I definitely would not have wanted to be there otherwise, but I managed to have some conversations, so it was worth it.

Anyhoo. I didn't buy anything except for a snackeroo (блины blini), mainly because the prices were about the same as American prices. It's hard to know whether things here are going to be ridiculously inexpensive...or not. For example, restaurant food is always cheap while some groceries (nuts, vegetables) are about the same. I also couldn't find any particularly Russian clothing, which is the only thing I had much interest in.

I'm trying to get people, not too many people, to go to a jazz club tonight. The main challenge when organizing anything is that many of us are housebound until our host mothers feed us dinner.

My parents are in Moskow now, I assume. They are supposed to return tonight some time around midnight. I hope they do!

Tomorrow, we are going to the баня banya. The girls went last week. I won't go into too many details based on my second-hand information, but I hear it's a riot. So I'll have a report by my next post, but probably without pictures. (Because we will all be naked.)

I'm listening to some music that I bought! Two CDs of folk music, some of which we sing in choir. The saleslady didn't speak any English, which was great for me because usually Russians with a bit of English want to practice their English. I cheated a bit by humming the songs I wanted.

Putin is going to be here tomorrow! There is a big tall ship regatta. I mean a big (tall ship) regatta. I'm going to try to hear him speak, or at least see him saunter around.

internet is back!

for now, anyway. It's raining here, as it often does. A rather wet city, at least in the summer - built on a swamp at the watershed of a river, full of canals, bridges, and lots of rain. Right now there's a sort of drizzle, but it often falls in buckets.

Another strange thing is that it's actually dark now, a few minutes after midnight. This is not really because the white nights are fading, which they are, but mainly because of the dark rain clouds. But yes, there is now a solid hour or two of darkness some time around 3am. A little sad, but I guess I'm spoiled.

So my parents are here. I ate with them this afternoon at a пельмени pelmeni restaurant. A small place close to Эрмитаж Hermitage on a side street. I found it in Lonely Planet. The menu was all "authentic" Russian food except for a few token American items. And I suppose the Finnish soup that I ordered was not authentic Russian. Anyway, it was all very delicious. As usual, I had a confrontation with the waitress which consisted of her refusing to speak Russian and me refusing to speak English. It's a tricky situation because they really do want to practice their English. Most Russians that I've encountered can get around in English but are far from fluent. It's really strange to realize that in certain situations, I might know enough Russian for it to be more efficient for everyone than English.

For the record, my first attempt to write "soup" in the previous paragraph came out as "soop".

My parents are here until Sunday or Monday. They're taking the train to Moscow on Friday night for a visit. It's rather difficult to keep track of them, mainly because they can't sound out things written in Russian because they can't read the Cyrillic alphabet so they are usually not able to tell me where they are. And I guess I should mention that they're here as tourists mostly, obviously timed to coincide with my trip. I had lunch-dinner (dunch) with them and two friends (Ariel and Zach) yesterday afternoon, which was dandy.

I'm having lots of fun in choir. Most people don't come anymore because they are bored or uninterested, but a few of us still do, and we're learning lots of Russian folk songs! I'm going to try to find some recordings to bring back.

So if the posts abruptly end again, it's because the internet is so sketch. I want to write about Эрмитаж Hermitage which we visited a few days ago, but I really need to do work now, so I'll save it.

internet is gone!

which is why I haven't been posting. It might come back though...I'm just not sure when. Anyway, all continues to be well, I won't write now thought because I'm at school.

an exploratory initiative

I was sitting in my room just now and I started flipping through the Lonely Planet that I tossed into my luggage at the last minute. I quickly realized that the time has come to be a tourist as well as a student.

To be fair, I have been doing plenty of touring. Lots of churches, all of the cultural hot spots, and the like. But all of those things are with Smolny and the group. Also, they're all in a sort of similar vein. The churchy vein.

So now that I have my bearings in the city and a relatively concrete understanding of public transport, I can start to explore. Exploration will begin...tomorrow! I tried to get a couple of people go go exploring tonight, true to my form of getting ridiculously excited about my latest thought and tossing everything else out the window in reckless pursuit. My social targets both calmly explained to me that it's kind of late, everyone is pooped, and we could do something fun tomorrow.

Just to clarify, by "exploration" I mostly mean finding some of the cafes, parks, and concert venues, and whatever else Lonely Planet talks about. Really, I just want to do some more things that aren't in the schedule they gave us.

Also, I'm becoming friends, I guess, with Саша Sasha, the boyfriend. By becoming friends, I mean he's always happy to see me and always tries to feed me alcohol and helps me with Russian pronunciation. A jovial fellow. He told me he could show me around the city if there's anything I'd like to see or do. I told him I'd like to do whatever he does with his friends, a suggestion that made Саша Sasha laugh hysterically. But I think after regaining some composure, he agreed to my proposition.

We're having a 4th of July picnic on Sunday, the 5th of July, and then we're going to a баня banya!

The last few days have been mostly consumed by homework. This isn't so bad because I've founds some homework buddies, a development which perhaps explains why the last few days have been mostly consumed by homework.