Медвежонок = little bear. aka the President.

Again, another week rap up (I'll get better at this, I promise)

The beginning of the week was pretty basic: went to class, pronounced words wrong, talked about who we would like to meet if we could meet anyone (my answer was Robert Plant :P), and the such.

On Monday, Sveta (Света), who is a friend of Anya's, offered to take some of us on a tour of where she worked. She is a writer for a St. Petersburg finance newspaper. I was excited to see how a newspaper usually worked (never been to a newspaper office before, only seen some on television).

After a 15 minute walk, a 10 minute bus ride, and another 10 minute walk, we were there. What's really cool is that it is situated at a "business center;" the office for Microsoft was right next door. Walking inside, it looked like I stepped into an Ikea showroom. Everything was colorful and made out of that Ikea styled wood. They even had multiple fish tanks all over (with ridiculous amounts of exotic fish...and some sharks?). After a quick tour we all gathered in a conference room and discussed the development of technology in the world and how that affects news reporting and the development of businesses (from contraptions to facebook). They even told us that if we would like to, we could write articles about budding businesses at Yale and they will publish them in their paper. Sweet.

Tuesday, Olya (Оля), another friend of Anya's, offered to take some of us to the top of the St. Isaac's Cathedral (Исаа́киевский Собо́р), the largest Russian Orthodox church in the city. It is absolutely magnificent in all senses of the word. For the past two weeks, it's been surrounding me: we can see it directly accross the Neva from our university (pictured), we pass by it constantly to get to other National landmarks, sit in the parks around it, and when Eunju and I were stuck because of the bridges, we chilled around it for a while. As a class we are not going to see it, which is really a shame, but we were free to go see it whenever we would like. I wanted to go to the top of the church since I first saw it, so I jumped at the opportunity to go with Olya.

From here, you can see every point of the city. It's amazing.

Nicholas I Monument from above. St. Issac's sits right between Nicholas and Peter the Great (the Bronze Horseman). Funny story: originally, this statue was going to face the other way, away from St. Issac's in order to face the governmental building. However, it would seem as if Nicholas was sticking his butt in Peter's direction (his statue at least), and they couldn't have that. So the plans were changed and Nicholas switched around.

The Neva River and the Admiralty (former Naval base-> now Academy)

The city (lovely shot of the Russian flag if you squint)

One of the many statues surrounding the top of the Cathedral (reminds me a little of "Don't Blink," haha Doctor Who)

The Hermitage (left) and Alexander's Column (right)

After leaving the Cathedral, we bought ice cream and sat in a park facing the Neva along with the Bronze Horseman.

Peter in all of his glory

View of St. Isaac's from where we were sitting

And then on Wednesday we took as nice old trip to the Russian Museum. Originally it was the Mihailovsky Palace, though it was later turned into a museum and opened to the public in 1898.

Here we saw mostly religious paintings (what we are currently studying in our culture class), such as icons from the 14th century, to more modern pieces of the early 1900s. Me being the art fanatic that I am, took notes and will be looking up my favorite pieces soon. Our guide was wonderful. He not only explained the history of the artist and the pieces, but also different aspects of the piece itself (technique, images, etc), what he believed they reflected, and how they related to the time period. He made me toy again with the idea of maybe majoring in something arty.

You needed to buy a special pass to take pictures inside, so I only have pictures of the outside.

A statue of Pushkin in a park in front of the museum aptly called "Art Park" (it's surrounded by theaters and museums).

Our class walking to the museum

"State Russian Museum"

One of the lions protecting the museum. These lions (along with sphinxes) can be found all over the city, in many different forms. They are a sign of power. However, Lewis Carroll described the lions during his visit as 'playful kittens with big balls of yarn.'

And the rest of the week entailed of us getting ready for our camping trip this past weekend (I'll do a whole blog post on that....I'm coming, I'm coming!). I had to buy a backpack for the trip, given that my bag broke this week and my хозяйка didn't have one (though considering I think she's going on 70, that's not too much of a surprise). The thing is with russian stores, everything is specialized - everything. There is no one stop shopping store a-la Walmart to supply all your needs. Luckily there is a sport's store at the metro station near my apartment, so I was able to grab a backpack there. I feel like my russian reaches its best when I have to buy obscure necessities like an internet router or a backpack, but absent when I'm ordering lunch at a restaurant. I guess the process of learning russian takes a detour? Может быть.

Also, while at the store I swear I heard another song by this guy on the intercom (someone showed me this back in New Haven. Worth the watch). Possibly the only black rapper in Russia.

I'll come back soon with a new update on camping this past weekend. Even while sick, I'm so happy I went. Rural Russia is much different from the hustle and bustle of St. Petersburg.

Пока!

--Н.И--

For future reference, it's the other bridge

So I thought I would give a quick run down of my Saturday night. Interesting story.

Saturday, we spent most of the day at Peterhof (amazing amazing amazing) and when we got back we were all exhausted. Except most people had plans to go out that night. I thought, "well, what the heck. I haven't gone out at all yet because I was sick, and I am in St. Petersburg..." I decided to join the group of people going with Allen and Jon-Michael. Their хозяйка (hostess) was planing on taking people out bar/club hopping. It was actually a lot of fun, especially during the White Nights when it's still light out. We moved from a pretty basic bar to one that played spanish-inspired russian music (my favorite one), to one that looked like it belonged in a coming-of age foreign film (weird graffiti and art on the walls, neon lights, lasers, etc), to the last one hidden in the basement of a building where you have to squeeze between a fence to get into (oh, you know it). All pretty fun.

Some people wanted to head back around 1:30 am, so some of us decided

to walk them home. See, Eunju and I live on the island, while the bars and most of the homestays for people are on the mainland. The bridges to get to the island go up at 1:30 am to allow ships to pass through (the Neva River is HUGE), but there is one that comes down at 2:45 am until 3:10. That gives us a little window to cross the bridge and go home. Eunju and I were already planning on staying out past the bridges going up and then crossing over during that window. Since we had time to spare, we hung out at a cafe with Panos, and then wandered around the Hermitage taking pictures. It was actually kind of dark at this time (the sky was a lovely, deep, dark sea blue), but there were plenty of tourists around.

As we sat by the bridge, waiting for it to come down we met a group of 4 kids from Dartmouth, also waiting for the bridge. Talking, we realized that the bridge should have come down a while ago. So we asked a bridge security officer about the situation. He told us that this bridge actually doesn't come down until 4:55 am. Though the bridge "over-there" is down right now, but will go up in 5 minutes. ... We were waiting at the wrong bridge. Crap.

We ran to the other bridge (me in heels. darn Russian women always wearing heels) and made it there in time to watch it go back up. With us on the wrong side of the river.

(Note: Not my picture. Will upload one once I steal one from Eunju :P)

Soooo. We had time to kill until 5 am. Wonderful. We wandered around St. Petersburg, seeing the sights all glorious in the actual darkness, passing the chocolate museum, as well as the vodka museum. Stopping at a hotel to use the restroom, we decided to hang out in their lobby until it was time to head back.

We left the hotel at around 4:45, walked to the bridge, and made it over safely :D Then, we headed in the direction where most people live. I live on the other side of the island, so I left them at one point to go to the metro. It didn't open until 5:30, and my train didn't actually get there until 6:01. By that time a guy hit on me and creepily stared at me until the last possible minute before he missed his train. As I was walking from the station to my apartment, another guy asked me to have some champagne with him (at least they're classy?? but it was 6 am....welcome to Russia, again). I was then paranoid the rest of the way home. But my хозяйка did not wake up. Bed time: 6:45 am. So much win.

It just reminds me of what Julia Titus (my former professor) told me when she found out where I'll be living: I should not walk home by myself, or I'll be mistaken for a lady of 'quesionable character.' Duly noted, Julia, duly noted.

My first night going out in St. Petersburg? Not too bad. Had an unwelcomed adventure, but it was fun :D

Пока!

--Н.И--

Introductions and Final Night on US soil

I figured some introductions are in order, at least before I fly off to the other side of the world. I had meant for my intro post to be my first one (which seems natural), but I was just too excited when the housing assignments came out. But, hey, as the children's poem goes: Second is the best.

So, welcome to my blog! Or, Здравствуйте! as I will soon get used to saying. My plan is to chronicle my trip, hopefully sealing it to memory, and to also allow my friends back at home to check in on what I'll be doing :D To be fair, this is my first blog. And past experiences trying to maintain diaries have failed tremendously. My hope is that this will be my one English reprieve, and it will motivate me to maintain it. And also take pictures (I'm not that big of a picture taker either.....I'm such a horrible tourist, and I live in Orlando!).

I've been in New Haven for the past 3 weeks, and I have to say it's been beautiful. It was pretty hot the first couple of days, but after some rain it became very nice outside.
I ended up living in Trumbull College, in the potty-court (a place every Yalie should check out). I have to say, besides the horrible phone reception and finicky internet access, it wasn't too bad. Though it did make me extremely excited to move into Calhoun next year :) I stayed in a suite of six, and we actually got really close within these few weeks. Two of them are going to Italy (plus one more adopted suitemate), one is going to Jordan, and two others are also going to Russia (making 3 of us). I'm actually going to miss them all.

The New Haven portion of the program has been intense. Language class from 9-12 every day, and a Russian Literature class twice a week. In addition to that, most of us went to 'русский стол', where we would all gather together for lunch and speak only in Russian. It got to a point when I would say 'извините' and 'спасибо' to the dining hall workers. XP Though I have been loving the Literature course. So far we've read works by Pushkin, Gogol, and Dostoevsky. Lovely, dark, wonderful stuff.

And this past week has only gotten more exciting with the beginning of the World Cup! Point of Note: I'm a HUGE futbol fan, so there will be comments on games within these posts. And I get excited. Can't. Wait.

Tonight, is my last night here on US soil. It's such a strange feeling: It'll be my first time outside of the states since my family came here 18 years ago. I have no idea what I'm doing, or what I have to expect. It'll be an adventure on it's own :D. We leave New Haven around noon, fly out from JFK around 6 and arrive in St. Petersburg at 11 on Saturday morning.

And my day, of course, will start at 7:30 tomorrow morning with the Germany-Serbia game (see what I said about the futbol? but to be fair, it is Germany), and it will be looong.

So, this is where I'll check out, watch the rest of my Doctor Who (who knows when I'll be able to watch it abroad. The horror!), and head to bed.

And I just want to say, I miss you all! See you on the other side.

Пока!

--Н.И--