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.