First night

Obviously still jetlagged and not dealing with it in the most responsible way imaginable (I am still awake). But also not the most irresponsible way imaginable.

It is close enough to the summer solstice that darkness never truly sets in St. Petersburg and stars do not appear. At 11pm, the first signs of dusk appear and at around 1:15am, we could tell that it was starting to get light again. It is a very, very strange situation. I suppose everyone just gets used to it and puts on blinders if they need them to sleep.

Much of today was spent on a bus. We took a three hour bus tour of the city, but unfortunately, most everyone was so jetlagged and sleep-deprived that most of us slept for a good chunk. Every 30 minutes or so, they would force us out of the bus to take pictures, which I suspect was a ploy to wake us up. I'm glad they did, because sleeping through the entire tour was not really my aim.

Evan and I, the two students with violins, had a mighty fiasco at customs. We each filled out the declaration form about five times because the customs person would point out 0nly one mistake each time. For anyone traveling into Russia, the dollar sign goes after the numeral. I then left my one piece of checked luggage in the baggage claim area because I was so fixated on the violin. Marching triumphantly towards the group which had waited a good 45 minutes for us, one of the program leaders said, "you don't have any luggage??" I ran back to baggage claim and saw my baggage nowhere. Though I could have panicked in English, I decided that the time had come for my first functional Russian sentence in conversation. I found someone dressed in uniform and announced:

я закрыл мы багаж! I forgot my luggage!

To which they said, браун! Brown! To which I said, да! Yes!

And they showed me to my luggage. No one in the group seemed very upset by the delay I caused. I think we've all come to expect, in the short time we've been here, delays, usually caused by one of our one, at every juncture. In fact, they seemed to think the situation quite funny.

Tomorrow we will all meet our host families! I am very excited. I don't intend to use English with them. I hope they are cooperative. I expect living with a host family to be my most formidable adventure, though having been in St. Petersburg for less than 24 hours, I'm not really in a position to say what my most formidable adventure will be.

A number of us have commented that it doesn't really feel like we're in another country. Though Russian is written and spoken first and the architecture is like nothing found in the United States, we really haven't had to deal with it. Our language pledge has not yet taken effect and most everything has been taken care of for us. I expect, and hope, that this will change once we move in with our families and start to move around the city on our own.

Here is a link to my photos from the flight and the first day for anyone who doesn't use facebook. For people who do use facebook, photos are on facebook.

I should note that the group continues to be very friendly! Everyone is learning everyone else's names very quickly. The group dynamic will, I predict, change dramatically one the language pledge begins and certain individuals such as myself will be rendered incoherent. How exciting!