The Importance of Technology

.....I snuck another post in before I leave for Moscow.  Sadly, there are no adventures or tidbits from Russia or even anything about what goes on in my life here in St. Petersburg.

No.  This is me writing my thoughts on technology and (maybe?? hopefully??) earning myself a scholarship for school.

Quite obviously, technology means a lot to me.  I like to keep in touch with my friends, my family, my boyfriend, and it's a bit hard when I go to school so far away from everyone.  This was true in DC, and is still true now that I study in Russia.

Here in St. Petersburg, technology is the medium for ALL my interactions outside the classroom.  Facebook is where I get reminders and heads-ups on what's going on in my program.  They post pictures of the different events in a group, and we the program people can comment on what strikes us and on notes from our coordinators.  Back in DC, I would have assignments online - posted either through Facebook or through Blackboard - and there's no way I would've been able to pass last semester (emailing professors, typing essays, and watching movies for my film class took up a huge chunk of my time) without technology.

As for keeping in touch with people, Skype is a glorious invention (thanks Estonia!!).  It's nice to have a conversation with someone via text, but to be able to see their faces.....to hear their voices......it's a whole separate thing.  I seriously doubt I'd be surviving and, indeed, thriving here if I couldn't Skype with those I love.  It's hard enough to be without them, but through technology I don't feel quite so far away from them.

So yeah.  Social media and Skype.  Both are lovely things for keeping in touch.  Just a thought: I never thought I'd be this attached to technology before I went off to school in DC, and now to St. Petersburg.  Yes, I played video games as a kid (and loved them), but I was never hugely into the whole social media/blog thing.  That was something other people did.  I didn't need to see the minute updates in other people's lives every few minutes - I could read a book instead.

Now it's a need.  I'm cut off from everyone back home in the States, and the only way to reach them is through technology.  Suddenly technology and social media is a way to stay connected in a way I never needed it to be before.  I have a blog that I upkeep on a fairly regular basis to share my adventures abroad on for those back home (or here in Russia, even).  I message back and forth with friends at school in the States - I'm 8 hours ahead, so that lets them answer on their own time and not worry that they're waking me up over here.  I have far too many email addresses to keep all the travel stuff, missives from advisers back at my home university, and program updates straight.  And in order to travel places here in Eastern Europe (or back home, actually), I use the internet to book my flights and check time tables.

Technology is now a huge part of my life, and I start freaking out if the internet doesn't work or I'm out of cell service here.  Technology keeps me connected, and it keeps me on track for my program.  And quite frankly, I can't imagine it not being a part of my life.  It has become that important.


So these are my thoughts on technology and how it pertains to me.  Now, I leave my laptop here at my homestay and go to catch a midnight train (going aaaaaaaaaanyyyyyyyyywheeeeeeeeeeeeere).  Be back in two weeks!!

Happy Midterms!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

The aspirin is front and center on the desk, the Nutella has migrated out of my backpack and gained a spoon (very Bre-esque, except hers was peanut butter), the floor is scattered in notes, and all the score music has been busted out.


Must be midterm season once again.

There goes the hope

It's a short week this week - only three days - yet a boatload of hell has been packed into that short time frame.

Monday: culture test on art

Tuesday: grammar test (on grammar, obviously)

Wednesday: phonetics test on intonation and dictation

My head feels like it's gonna explode.  I swear the knowledge I'm trying to cram into my brain is pouring back out faster than I can stuff it in.

And of course the cat is all like "Nope. No laptop.  No studying for you."

You should pet me, not stare blankly at screens

Thanks cat.  Thanks.

Anyway, I busted my brains yesterday for my culture exam.  It didn't seem like much - learn some artists, put them in the correct century, and be able to recognize a painting.  Problem is, I never really liked art.  I mean, I work in an art gallery on campus in DC and I visit art museums.  I can appreciate art - its beauty, the thought behind it, the effort the artist put into it.  But I'm not particularly an art person.  My concept of art boils down to whether it looks nice and whether I like it or not.  I don't want to spend what feels like 5 million years looking at one painting and getting the historical play-by-play.  That being said, trying to memorize all the artists' names and dates and what they painted was torture.

I did it though.  I cut, condensed, and tried to guess what my professor would put on the test.  She wasn't sure, so she didn't tell us this time.  And for what I studied, I remembered about 90% of it (yay me!!).

Test day dawns.  My host mom was looking at me like I was gonna break or something - the stress must've been plain on my face.  I got to school, got my test.........and died inside.  Ужасно.

I KNOW THIS I KNOW THIS..........I don't actually know this.  Damnit

It wasn't horrendous, but there was definitely a lot more on it than my professor had initially thought she'd put on the test.  Hopefully the essay will be worth more than I think it is.  And I'll get kudos points for knowing extra about all the artists I DID remember.

I spent this morning listening to Stardust on the walk to school, so here's a musical representation of how this culture test went today:

Crap, here's the test, here's the test, LET'S GOOOOO!!! I know these things, writing words, I can do this.  Wait.......wait wait wait.  I don't recognize this.  Crap.  Moving on.  Test is harder than I thought.  Ehhhhhhh well.......things.......crap crap crap I studied for so long last night and this wasn't there.  This wasn't even in my notes and I write EVERYTHING down!!!!  Gahhhhhh keep going.  Now for the picture recognition......nope, no recognition.  I'm gonna die..........maybe if I write extra things I can get extra points??  Worth a shot.  *desperately writes all knowledge*  Essay essay essay.....I need to try.  I'm gonna lose all points if I don't.  *keeps babbling for personal opinion section*  That was awful and I don't wanna see it ever again.  No more art.

.......my thoughts in a nutshell.  They coincide very well with the music, no??

If the test went well, being a hard test and all, it would've sounded more like this:

A little more hopeful, a little more triumphant, with just a hint of "Daaaaaamn that was hard"

Hopefully tomorrow's grammar test will sound like that.  It'll be hard - I expect nothing less from the professor people in the semesters before me nicknamed "Voldemort".  Grammar lady is hard, but she is fair and truly wants people to learn.  So I'm hopeful it'll go well.

Also grammar isn't art.  I like grammar a bit better.

Aaaaaaaand then Wednesday is phonetics.  This class is mostly about being able to speak correctly, and the test completely reflects that.  It's on intonations, spoken mutations, audio dictations, and (obviously) on pronunciation.  So that test's gonna sound more like this:

Glorious

Once all these horrendous tests are out of the way, I have just enough time to nap and pack before I head off to Moscow for the weekend!!  Yay trips!!  And the hotel will have actual comfy beds.

So excited to sleep on a bed that gives me a hug when I lie down, not a creaky board

I take the sleeper train in from St. Petersburg, then three days of museums and tours and excursions in Russia's capitol.  From there Lauren and I stay one extra night before jetting off to the Baltic states for Travel Week.  During the next week and a half, two weeks ish, I won't have internet.  Fret not!!  I will be back with stories and pictures and more posts.

Ta ta for now!!

Random Russian Tidbits

I tend to talk a lot about my adventures here, and quite obviously so - I'm on study abroad and having the adventure of a lifetime!!  But there's more to Russia than just going to all these excursions and touristy places with people.  I thought this time I'd share a little bit about the little Russian things - the superstitions, the everyday life stuff, things about the city itself.  So here are a few tidbits from St. Petersburg and Russian life.

1. Russians are blunt, but friendly

My host family and my professors don't mince words; if something's on their mind, they just say it.  I learned very fast not to be an overly polite American.  If I don't like something, or something is bothering me, or I simply can't understand a word of what someone just said, I need to speak up and tell them.  That being said, the people here are very friendly.  Actually, they're a lot more friendly than a lot of the Americans I met back home.  A person on the street will stop and chat and gladly help you if you are lost or have a question.  My host mom is literally one of the sweetest, most easygoing people I've ever met and she strikes up conversation with random people.  Compare this to the east coast attitude I grew up with where if you don't know someone and they start talking to you with zero pretext, you are super suspicious and think they must want something.  Thus, people are super brusque and try to extract themselves as fast as possible to continue walking with purpose to wherever it was they were going.

2. Food is kind of a big deal here

Russians love their food.  According to my conversation professor, the average Russian spends half their monthly salary on food.  And to celebrate payday, they go out to eat at a nice restaurant.  Yulia Georgievna is retired, and she spends a good chunk of the day looking at recipes and making food.  Her house here is always stocked with tea and small sweets and cereal and sandwich fixings and just food.  Food food.  The stuff you'd find on your dinner plate takes up 90% of the fridge space (which is why my juice and snack food hangs out in my room on the windowsill).

Also to Russians, meat is pretty pricey.  To an American, the prices are comparable for everything except poultry, which is cheap here.  But red meat??  Fish??  Ooooh that's costs quite a bit here.

Also also - snacks aren't nearly as big here as in the States (or so it seems).  In a normal grocery store back home, whole aisles are dedicated to chips, crackers, cookies, pretzels, and other small noms.  Here, snacks are more as accompaniments to tea.  Thus, there is a whole lot less of the crackers and goldfish that I love from home (though these things do exist here).

The juice here, as I've probably mentioned in earlier posts, is fantastic.  And cheap.  I'm still going through at least a liter a week in juice alone, from multifruit cocktail to orange juice to peach-apple juice.  I don't even wanna know how much tea I drink now - that's a whole 'nother thing.

3. Apartments, blenders, and washing machines make excellent wedding presents

Russians who live in the city live in apartments.  100%.  That being said, apartments here function like condos - you buy and sell them as if they were a house.  They don't come with appliances.  They don't come with dishwashers.  They don't come with washing machines.  I've seen ads in the metro saying "Son getting married?  You should by him and his wife an apartment."  Somehow I don't think my own parents (or my future in-laws) will be that generous when I get married.  Also in America, things like washing machines and dishwashers come standard in the living accommodations (also also dryers are a thing that actually exist, unlike in Russia).  So for Russians, getting an apartment and furnishing it so the couple can live and start a family is kind of a big deal.

Cars are also a nice gift here.  I'd like one of those please.  Preferably this one - it's quite Caitie-sized.

4. Russian language is hard, and the people here know it

Mihail, my conversation professor here, said in class "Russian is hard for you.  It is hard for us too."  According to Mihail, Russians have Russian language classes up until they graduate from high school.  They learn how to read, to write, to speak.  They learn the myriad of spelling rules and the sometimes random pronunciation switches and the different intonations.  All the things I learn in school, they spent 11 years learning.  This astounded me, as in America our own language classes don't last long.  We learn spelling and how to speak, but grammar drops out of classes surprisingly early - by the end of elementary school it becomes sporadic and more literature based, by 8th grade it is replaced completely by lit classes.

This might explain why my grammar is so spectacularly bad at times.  I don't know it well enough in English, and trying to translate it into multiple cases with separate endings and prepositions in Russian (and even before, when I took French) is incredibly hard.  I think I do a decent enough job with it, but I still wonder sometimes how bad it actually sounds.  And my current language policy is to just keep speaking and hope that eventually something correct will flow from my brain and words will come out of my mouth and make actual sense.

However, despite my glaring grammatical problems and a general lack of vocab, very often here people tell me that my Russian is very good.  Lauren and I were trying to figure this out.  If Russians know their language is hard, even for them, than they might put more emphasis on pronunciation and intonation than we do as native English speakers.  Where in America you don't hear too often someone saying that a foreigner speaks good English, the Russians seem to appreciate the effort we make to speak their language and speak it properly.  In no way do Lauren and I know a lot of vocab - in fact, half the time we have no idea how to say something and have to keep stalling and fishing for the words we want - but the strangers we talk to and the friends we make here seem to think we speak excellently as foreigners learning Russian.  Not gonna lie, the compliment is a tremendous confidence booster.  And it helps that, because we really do try hard to speak correctly, the people we talk to help us as best they can to find the words we need and are very forgiving of grammar mistakes.


5. I feel horrendously underdressed everywhere I go

I am a woman.  As such, it is a daily struggle trying to figure out what to wear.  Back home, it's easy - I'm a poor college student, thus if I'm going to class I'll be perfectly fine in jeans and a t-shirt.  If I have work, it'll be nice jeans and a nice shirt, or some sort of dress or skirt combo with nice shoes.  Here, everyone is so dressed up ALL OF THE TIME.  The women don't leave the house without full makeup and every hair perfectly in place, and almost all of them are wearing either heels or fancy boots (or high heeled boots).  Even the police women here have impeccable makeup and at least a small heel on their boots.  The men are, for the most part, in nice jeans or pants with some sort of sweater-shirt combo.  Everyone looks so nice.

And then there's me.  With my jeans and t-shirt combo, my big red DC sweatshirt thrown over it and either sneakers or my heavy snow boots encasing my feet.  So not Russian.


6. Russians are surprisingly superstitious

Yes, everyone has the superstition of the black cat crossing your path or the spilling of salt and such.  But here, Russian superstitions and some bits of common advice are smooshed together.  Here are a few:

• Do not whistle in the house, or all your money will walk out the door (my mom will appreciate this, and no I will not stop)
• If you shake hands over a threshold, one of you will die, and fairly soon
• Do not put empty alcohol bottles on the table, for it is a symbol that your house will have nothing (no food, no drink, no company).  Put them on the floor when you've drained them
• Don't share your knife or handkerchief (yes, those are still used here). If your friend needs one, have them "pay" a few kopecks for it first
• Give flowers in only odd numbered bouquets (1, 3, 5, etc.). If you give an even numbered bunch (2, 4, 6, etc.) it is for the cemetery only - if the recipient is living, they will throw your bouquet away (waste of good flowers, don't do it)
• Don't play Russian roulette.  Like, ever

7. The exchange rate is pretty fabulous

Right now, I get 36 roubles to the dollar.  For the things I look at prices for - juice, bread, peanut butter, souvenirs - I'm not breaking the bank every time I want/need something.  I can subsist on about 150 roubles a day, which is $4.17.  Not bad, huh??  On days when I adventure, my tickets to museums and cathedrals cost about that much, plus whatever I get for snacks or meals when I'm out.  So maybe it comes to 500 roubles instead of 150.  That's still only about $14.  That's less than it costs me to go to the movies back home, and here that covers an entire day.  The only downside to the monies here is that metro fares are pretty comparable to back home, and I have to metro EVERYWHERE.  So I'm still spending an incredible amount in transportation.  However, still cheap.

8. My conversation professor wants to know what a skunk smells like

No joke.  There are no skunks here in the city, so he says that, just once in his life, he wants to smell that pungent aroma that is skunk.  If only so that he can freak out and never wanna smell it again.

9. Sometimes elk find their way into the city center

Apparently they cross the Neva River while it's frozen in the winter.  As they cross, the ice can break under their weight.  And the closest port is by the Winter Palace at the Hermitage.  So sometimes the elk just wander around the center of St. Petersburg until someone calls the Russian animal control.  They show up, tranq the elk, and move it/them back to the forests outside the city.

Also in Russian, there is only one word for both elk and moose - low-sss (лось).  So in class when I was trying to talk about one versus the other, I had to make the antlers on my head with my hands to show which was which.

Master Cooking Class: Georgian

Yes, we are just that cool.  There are two cooking classes offered on the spring program to those who love being in the kitchen and are willing to pay to have their minds blown by a master chef.  The first of these was a crash course in Georgian food.

Hmmm Georgia, you say??  Odd choice of cooking class in Russia, of all places......

Usually when people hear "Georgia" they think of the state.  Нет.  Southern comfort food was definitely not what I was cooking.

Here it is!!

Look at those mountains - gorgeous, no??

Georgia the country is squished between Russia and Turkey on the eastern end of the Black Sea.  It is also the birthplace of Josef Stalin, Communist revolutionary and leader of Russia after Lenin's death.

Things my DC friends will appreciate - pomegranates are used in Georgian cooking!!  According to the internet, pomegranates have been grown in the Caucasus region for quite some time now, and indeed, two of the four dishes made in the master class featured them.

So food!!  To start with, here is the amazing, nameless chef who taught us how to make the fancy Georgian food.

A wild master chef appeared!!

First up on the class menu was harrcho, which was a soup that reminded me a lot of jambalaya back home.

Харчо

Pretty simple, and it was primarily what I got to work on during the master class.  First, you chop some onions.

Work work work.  Chop chop chop

Then you pose for a picture.

We look so happy. You'd never know those onions were making us cry an ocean of tears

And then go back to fighting with the onions and desperately trying not to cry.  Back home, chopping onions is nothing, and they're twice the size of the ones here.  Yet back home, I barely ever tear up.  These things were tiny, but my eyes were swimming bad enough at times that I had to stop and blink away the tears so I wouldn't accidentally cut my fingers as I chopped.

The chef seemed to approve of my onion chopping skills, so I was upgraded to actual cooking!!

Making a masterpiece, one scoop of tomato paste at a time

I made the sauce and cooked the rice.  That was hard - try making rice al dente and getting it right.  From there some minced garlic was added, heaping handfuls of salt/pepper/sugar, and into another pot full of chicken broth it went.  Chicken was chopped and I stirred it in, and the chef worked some magic with more salt/pepper and chili powder.  Thus was my job in the kitchen done.

The other foods which I did not prepare were pp'halli - eggplant strips in a walnut/onion paste with pomegranate on top.....

Пхали

......chahokh'beeli - a chicken dish, which I have no idea what else went into the making of it.....

Чахохбили

.....and hachapurri - really excellent bread stuffed with cheese and slathered in butter.

Хачапури

Best thing about this class??  We got to eat everything we made.  Like everything else in Russia, our food was served with hot tea, and everyone helped themselves to the feast.  Everything smelled wonderful.  And it tasted even better.  I'm definitely making these when I come home.

Maslenitsa

Maslenitsa post.  Definitely over a week late, but this is a better week and I have finally finished my post.

So Maslenitsa.  A week of family, friends, and a whole lot of blini.  This past Sunday, the last day of Maslenitsa, there was a program excursion to an island waaaaaaaay in the northern part of St. Petersburg.  It was super informal - whoever wanted to go would meet up at a specific metro stop and walk over to the festival together.  Whether the group stayed together or not was up to us.  So my friend Lauren and I met up at our metro stop and headed over.


My being a surprisingly social person (despite the fact that I am also a surprisingly quiet person at times), and totally eavesdropping on the conversations around me to try to pick up some Russian, I heard English.  Someone else was speaking English, and it was English English.

Thus did I turn to Lauren and announce that I was gonna go make friends.  Because that's not weird at all, me just randomly starting a conversation with a complete stranger for the sole reason that they speak the same language.  Well done, Caitie.  Not weird at all.  Turns out it was a good idea.  They were two really nice girls from England, Georgie and Nadia, who are also studying at Smolney.  We chatted for a bit before we arrived at our station and went to join the program group.


So Lauren and I were just standing around on the edge of the program group.  We tend to do that, quite frequently actually, since the people on the program cliqued up something fierce.  Anyway, we looked over and there was Georgie and Nadia, joined by another girl and a guy, just milling about in the metro entrance.  They looked like they were unsure of where to go and what to do, so Lauren and I went over and asked them to come join our American group.  We met the two newcomers - Jade and Charlie - and, later joined by our friend Alicia, we proceeded to spend the rest of the day with them.


Awesome!!  The place we went to was by Yelagin palace waaaaaay in the north, like I said earlier.  There's a ferris wheel nearby that I can see from across the river mouth in my little room at my homestay.

The Yelagin palace is just north of Petrogradskaya - it's very green and to the north on the right.  It's winter still, so it was still gross and mucky and gray out, but you could see the beauty in the grounds.  Which were littered with festival goodness.  Blini stalls were EVERYWHERE, with sooooooo many different fillings to choose from.  There was a pageant with a guy in the back dressed as a red sun - he looked pretty drunk, doing the dorky two step at the back of the stage, but he seemed happy enough.  At the front was a guy with a nice beard and his assistant.

Here they are. Look at that assistant in his fancy dress

We spent a good chunk of the time wandering around looking at everything at the festival and trying to meet up with Alicia, who unfortunately let me try to navigate.  I get lost with GPS running in my car, so I don't know why we thought it was a good idea to let me give the directions......


Anyway......Maslenitsa.  We wandered around the entire grounds of the palace complex watching the shows and eating blini - mine was cabbage and mushroom.  Now those of you who know me know that I HATE mushrooms.  If I find them in my food, I pick them out and mutter under my breath about how my fork even had to come in contact with them and how horrible that is and grrrrr.  But this is Russia.  My professor has been telling me for years that people here go out and pick their own wild mushrooms and cook them up.  And they taste different here.  Back home they taste like rubbery dirt and broken dreams.

Deathshroom indeed

But here, I don't know what they do to them, but they have barely a taste.  They're minced small enough that you don't get that super rubbery texture, and there's just a hint of flavor.  And no lingering taste of earth.  The cabbage is cabbage - Russians know how to cook that well.

Mmmmm yum

After exploring most of the festival, our group wandered back to where we found a Nutella blini stand.  The thought of warm blinis and melty Nutella was just too good (tasted fantastic too - mine came with bananas).  Nadia fought her way to the front of the stand while Lauren joined a tug-of-war group.  They did pretty well too.  And her prize was a nice warm blini.  They even came wrapped in a cone for eating on the go.

As we finished eating, the tug-of-war dissolved into a circle dance.  The people in the circle would pinch in and go under the arms of two people, also in the circle.  Then as the circle returned to its former round shape, another section would pinch in and repeat.  Dancing and circling and pairing off at one point.  Alicia jumped into the circle and the rest of us just kinda stood there in a weird mix of surprise, awe, and jealousy.  So Charlie jumped in, then Lauren.  Then I joined, and I got Georgie in too.  Jade and Nadia passed on the dancing, but caught part of it on camera.

Fancy dancing over with, Lauren, Alicia and I said goodbye to our new British friends and went back to do a last wander-through of the palace grounds before heading back to our homestays.  We got sidetracked by an exhibition of Russians on horseback attacking things with spears and swords as they thundered by, spearing bottles, slicing sticks with hats on them, picking up said sticks from the ground while still on horseback.  It was wicked cool, but I am short and people are tall, so I didn't see too much.  I had a nice view of one of the hats-on-a-stick though.


We also got sidetracked a little further down.  In another clearing with more blini stalls there was a fabulous game.  Essentially, you stand on a really wobbly log that barely fits your feet and beat the other person - who is also on a really wobbly log - with a sack of straw.

Weeeeeeeeee are the champions, my friend..........

And that was Maslenitsa!  We went back to our homestays after that and I had a nice dinner with my host mom (with more blini!) and spent the rest of the night hanging out with my host family and being social with them.  All in all, a very good day.

Update

I haven't written in over a week.  Or rather, I haven't posted.  I started a post on Maslenitsa and the festival I went to, but let's face it, it's been a pretty crappy week.  Study abroad isn't just having adventures and a few classes in a foreign country - it's an experience in life.  It's a completely different culture with a different language, cuisine, different mannerisms and customs, and sometimes it gets to you.  The homesickness sets in and you get little bursts of culture shock with it, which feels like "What did I do.......this was a bad idea."  Some days it's bearable, some days you barely feel it, but some days it crashes over you like a tidal wave.


This week was like a tidal wave.  It was stressful.  It was long.  Things didn't go my way at all.  I was homesick.


And that's ok.


Study abroad is not supposed to be easy.  In fact, I'd be kinda pissed if it wasn't challenging.  I'm here to learn and to study and to be immersed in another culture, not be on an extended vacation.  Also not all weeks in life are good ones.  Sometimes the lousy days all clump together and the week just sucks.  But that's just it.  It's one week out of my life.  And things will be better next week.


I haven't written in a week.  I didn't wanna finish the Maslenitsa piece because I didn't wanna taint the happiness of that day with the negativity that came from my crappy week.  I will finish it up soon and post it and it will be glorious and fun.  Right now, I'm gonna pour myself some of the amazing multifruit juice I keep here in my room and just let life be what it is.  Life.


Just chalk it up to a bad week.  The next one will be better.

It's the first of March, time for an update

According to the Russians, spring begins on March 1st.  I have no idea if it's official or just one of those generally accepted ideas, but hey!  Spring!!

Flowers for everyone!!

The weather is warming up, the days are getting longer, and THERE IS ACTUALLY SUN IN THE SKY.  I have photographic proof of this.

See that thing??  Way up there in the sky??  That is ACTUAL SUN, not the grayish blob that hangs in the sky behind the clouds here.  The day is instantly better with sunlight on my face.  And the day is warmer with it out too.

So I do more here than eat food and go on adventures to fantastical churches around the city.  This week is Maslenitsa, so there's been a lot of eating and wandering and generally hanging out with people.  Beyond Maslenitsa, it's just a regular week.  And as it's the weekend, I need things to do.  

Also procrastination.  I have a test on Monday in my culture class, a presentation due on Tuesday for my US-Russian relations class (which is super unclear about what I actually have to do), and a test on Thursday in Grammar.  I need things to do to procrastinate.  So I spent my Saturday doing two things.  Actually buckling down and doing some studying at the piano cafe, with copious amounts of music breaks.  And meeting up with my language conversation partner.  Because language partners are cool.

So are bowties, but that's beside the point.....

My language partner is a Russian student here in St. Petersburg.  Her name is Anastasia.

Do you mean.......??

NO!!

THIS MOVIE RIGHT HERE???

Not the movie.  Wrong Anastasia.  And it's pronounced differently here.  The name in Russian is pronounced "Ann-na-stass-ee-ya", not "Ann-ah-stay-zhia".  Yes??  Yes.  Moving on.

Anastasia and I went wandering around the city on one of the islands.  We started out at the Peter and Paul Fortress, which has its own island here and used to be used as a high end prison.  Such illustrious people as Lenin and Dostoevsky have graced the prison with their presence, and indeed, the first prisoner held here was Peter the Great's own son (for high treason).  We walked around the little island fortress and just talked.  What we like and don't like.  Where we're from, what we do at school, what kind of music we listen to.  Different stories of America and Russia, told through the eyes of the girls who live there.  I had fun.  And it was interesting to see the ebb and flow of the languages.  Anastasia and I spoke in a mix of Russian and English, sometimes with several sentences in one language, sometimes switching languages mid-sentence.  It was interesting, and the weird thing was, it felt so natural.  Just to switch languages like it's no big deal.  Of course, I was so happy because I was able to talk so much in Russian and I made sense (for the most part).  It turns out she lives in a dorm just down the road from me, which is super convenient, and maybe will make for some spur-of-the-moment adventuring.

The second thing today I can thank my mom for.  And by thank her, I mean why did you have to mention you were spring cleaning today?!!

WHYYYY

I told my host mom that my mom was doing the whirlwind cleaning things today, and mind you, it was 10pm here when I told her this.  And Yulia Georgievna went from wonderful grandmotherly Russian to hurricane in mere seconds.  She jumped up, zoomed out of the room, and reappeared with cleaning supplies.  Essentially she was like YOUR MOTHER HAS A FANTASTIC IDEA I LIKE THIS WE SHOULD DO WHAT YOUR MOM SAYS IT'S TIME TO CLEAN ALL THE THINGS!!!!!

She was a one woman force of nature, I swear.  Suddenly things in my room were being thrown everywhere to clear the floor as she swept a wet swiffer over the bare wood.  And she did it dancing to my Disney music - at the time, it was playing Cruella de Vil (yes, I'm that much of a nerd and a little kid at heart).  In the space of that one song, she scrubbed my floor clean, took all the trash and the collection of empty juice cartons out of my room, and remade my bed with clean sheets.  It was impressive and frightening at the same time.

Welcome to spring, I guess.