a damp day

It's only a few minutes after 11pm, but I'm very tired. This morning, I had my first rushed morning.

I was rushin'! Ho ho.

Anyway...наталя Natalia left breakfast for me because she had a doctor's appointment. I knew this was the plan, which is probably why I wasn't able to gather the strength of will to pry myself out of bed. I was able to make it to the bus just in time, and everything was OK.

Not that this type of morning is anything new to me, but I'm a bit surprised that it happened, only because I've been getting much more sleep than I did during the semester. Seven hours last night! I think the real problem is that every few hours I open my eyes as the sun glares in my window. Tonight is very cloudy, so perhaps this will be less of an issue.

Today is cold, windy, and rainy. My friend Olivia and I took the bus home from Smolny after courses. Sadly, we got off the bus at the wrong stop and had to walk a few blocks to our apartments. Coincidentally, the same thing happened this morning; we made it to class just in time after 15 minutes of power-walking.

This recurring problem is partly due to our collective lack of experience practicing the art of public transport. However, in my opinion, the larger issue is that, as we learned today, some of the buses have no one and no recording announcing the stops. This is only really a problem when it's pouring rain and impossible to see out the window. So we guess. And we haven't yet been too far off, haven't missed any classes. Should we become disoriented again, we've resolved to ask someone where we are (in Russian).

By the time I got home in the evening, I felt like a cold raisin.

Today, we had our first phonetics class. The teacher talked to us for about thirty minutes in Russian and none of us understood a thing she said. Not knowing what else to do, we stared at her like cows. Then, to our great surprise, she began explaining everything she had been saying in perfect English. I concluded that she must be a native English speaker, but I later learned that she can speak a few languages with virtually any accent due to her thorough training in phonetics. In spite of the rather unpleasant first thirty minutes of class, I actually like her, her attitude, and her refusal to speak to us in English until our inadequacy had been sufficiently established. Similar to studying the violin, when learning a new language, it is necessary to leave one's pride at the door. Or perhaps in the middle of a busy street.

I just completed several hours of домашнее задание homework. I didn't do anything other than try to take the bus home after class today, mostly because I was hoping to get to bed earlier. And then the homework took six times longer than yesterday, and I am back where I started.

Tomorrow is the first day of choir! I am excited.