Don’t Sweat It

So I was back in the gym today for the first time in almost a week and another of my wonderful observations came to mind. Russians don’t sweat. First off, let me say that I sweat all the time. Literally all the time. So I’ll be biking in the gym, dripping with sweat, with that gross patch growing on my shirt, and I’ll get some weird looks. They immediately know I’m foreign. Because I’m sweating. I don’t know what it is about the people here, if they’ve evolved to suit the climate or whether they’re constantly dehydrated from all the vodka they drink, but I really haven’t seen anyone sweat. There will sometimes be people running on the treadmills – I even saw one guy running fast – but none of them sweat! Running down the escalator in the metro gets me hot so I’ll take off my coat. Walking fast on the street gets me hot so I’ll take off my coat. Russians don’t seem to remove clothing, even if the temperature changes substantially. I’m looking forward to the winter to see if people act any differently… Well not REALLY looking forward to it because I know I’ll be exponentially more uncomfortable. Dogs don’t have sweat glands… Is it possible that Russians don’t either...?

So I’m feeling great today and am really happy to be back in the swing of things. I started getting sick last Friday and it put a bit of a damper on my weekend. Friday night was an organized night with Russian students and we went bowling, which was actually a ton of fun. And then I went home because I wasn’t feeling well. Saturday I did some work (screenshot of purgatory featured below), went to the gym (good idea Alex, that will help you get better) and tried to have some fun in the evening, before getting to bed early. Sunday was yet ANOTHER organized trip (we are spoiled, but I love it) to Peter and Paul’s Fortress, the oldest part of the city. I’ll give you some bite-size history on the other side of this photo…

So the new fortress was built on the site of St. Petersburg in 1703 as a buttress to the border with Sweden (The war with them went on for ages, you can find lots on the internet if you’re interested). Peter the Great got really excited about building a new capital – because he hated Moscow – and as the site for this ultramodern, new-age capital he chose the swamp surrounding the fortress. He recruited French architects to help him plan the city in a European style, built everything in a European style, set up an Admiralty to build a fleet in European style, and started setting up trade links in the Baltic, in true European style. About 60000 (might be 6000 but it’s more exciting this way) people died converting the swamp to a city, but Peter persevered and by the 1720s St. Petersburg had become the Russian capital. It’s pretty amazing that the city grew so fast and that so much labor went in to making my island habitable. So back to the fortress – this was really the start of the snowball and has remained very much preserved despite the immense changes to the city around it.

The cathedral is awesome and most of the Russian tsars after Peter the Great are buried inside (so you can see most of the Russian royalty in one trip – Convenient). I’ll try to put some pictures up of the inside. Like everything else in this city it’s so grand that it’s immediately overwhelming. If you removed half of the gold from the altar-side of the cathedral it would still be breathtaking. So what’s the point? To be European, but better. 18^th Century Russia in a sentence right there.

So after the cathedral we took a quick tour through the fortress prison, where the Decembrists and other revolutionaries (e.g. members of the royal family – what a sobering reversal of fates) spent months in solitary confinement. I would go crazy in a single day so let’s hope that I never end up there. People used to communicate by tapping their bed frames on the floor; they had to type out each letter individually. Can you imagine how long that would take? Let me also point out that the walls had been specially insulated so that communication would not be possible, which is incredibly vindictive.

So enough with the prison. After that I went back to bed, stayed home in bed on Monday and read most of my book, went to class Tuesday and came back to bed, finally felt slightly better on Wednesday. As illnesses go it wasn’t that bad – I exhausted and had a headache but there was very little mucous involved. MAJOR plus.

My courses have been great so far, and I’m incredibly excited about my history class. It’s going to be a ton of work but it should be great for my Russian and should be incredibly intellectually stimulating. The professor taught at Michigan for a couple years so he speaks fluent English, which again is a MAJOR plus. Once in a while he’ll mingle English into the steam of Russian and successfully pull me back in. Understandably lost I’ll hear “… Evangelical Uprisings” and I can get back on track. I barely know what those words mean in English, how does he??

Life and Culture in St. Petersburg should be easier in terms of work and vocabulary and I’m excited to learn more about the development of the city through the ages. And then of course there are RSL courses which constitute most of my academic effort but are not really worth talking about. Unless you’re interested in hearing more about the irregularities in prefix use for verbs of motion. Likely…

So I’m getting up early tomorrow to get my workout in before class so I should probably get to bed. But before I go, check out this jar of pickles:

Cucumbers from the dacha + those herbs and what appears to be a clove of garlic = Some truly delicious pickles. I have some more random photos stored up from around the house but you’ll have to wait until next time. There can only be so much fun in one blog post.

Well that’s it from me. Hope all is well elsewhere in the world!

First winter cold...

Spent most of this weekend sleeping but will hopefully be able to put together another post soon! For now, back to bed.

Чудо

Despite their various shortcomings, Russians have some things really figured out. As you can see this is yogurt in a bottle. It’s DRINKABLE. You get half a litre for a dollar and you can consume it anywhere. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. What a beautiful creation. In fact, the guys in the dormitory literally lived off чудо for their first week here. It’s a testament to the yogurt that they are still alive. The last I heard though they had bought 5 pounds of steak and things were looking up. But anyway, it’s both delicious and convenient. America – Get to work on bottling yogurt.

Чудо also happens to be one of the only Russian foods with protein. My family hasn’t been serving me a lot of meat (a single chicken leg or medium-sized hot dog are common at dinner and there’s no protein in the oatmeal I eat for breakfast) and so I’ve been desperate to find other sources at lunch and at my other various snack times. My greatest success so far was with a Big Tasty from McDonalds, but as we all know that’s not a great road to start down… I’m working on some sort of protein supplement but it will be a while before I can find a safe one at a reasonable price. So I’m complaining about the food, but my family really has been serving me a lot. Along with said chicken morsel I’ll be given an entire plate of vegetables, a whole potato, soup, biscuits, bread and tea. They’re all healthy, hearty foods in great quantity, but they haven’t stopped me from losing ten pounds while I’ve been here. All I want in the world is a steak. Will someone send me a steak in the mail?

So I started off talking about the wonderful bits of Russia (incidentally чудо means wonder. They really thought the yogurt thing through). Here are just a couple positive observations, many of which will speak straight to my Dad. First of all, the metro stations are all made out of regularly polished marble and the ceilings are like 30 feet high. As if that weren’t appealing enough, it’s a flat rate of 75 cents and trains leave every three minutes (there’s a timer so you can track them). The unsurprising consequence is that everyone takes the metro. Rush hour is CRAZY. There’s no wasted space on the train. In fact it’s rude if you’re not shoving to make more room on the train. Escalators are the same way. The metro is way below the city (because Peter the Great built it on a swamp - great thinking – and you need to dig down to get concrete foundations) so you spend a lot of time on the escalators. On the way down you either stand to the right or run down the left. If you don’t stand to the right, it’s your fault when someone running down the left knocks you over. So that’s just the metro. But it’s unbelievably efficient.

I’m on a new paragraph but I haven’t finished with my observations. I’m just going to go with it. So change in stores: This can be ridiculous. Russians are obsessed with paying in exact amounts and will often get angry if you make them count out change. I had a woman refuse to serve me because I tried to pay with a 1000 rouble note! (That’s a little more than $30) If you pay with an amount close to the price, the cashier will ask if you’ve got a rouble or two so he can give you an even amount. This is something you go through every time you stop in at a store. It’s amazing that an issue of minor concern has caused this full-scale national preoccupation.

I’ve got to write on this blog more often so I can share everything in smaller chunks. I’ve been writing for a while so I’m going to take a break… Okay I’m back. That was way less time for you than it was for me.

So I signed up for classes this week and am hoping that they’re going to work out well. We’re all taking RSL (Russian as a Second Language) as part of the program, so we only sign up for two classes at Smolny. At the moment I’m registered for a history course and a literature course. ‘History of the Russian Empire’ and ‘Life and Culture in St. Petersburg’. If I can’t make it through the history class on Tuesday I’ll have to change both courses. It’s definitely going to be difficult. They’re both in Russian, but the history class is a 300 level with a hundred pages of Russian reading a week. Could be too much but we’ll see!

I found a gym on Wednesday so I’ve been able to get my normal workouts in. It’s about 40 minutes away on the metro, but it’s a great gym. I often forget that I’m in Russia when I’m there. Plus it’s called Alex Fitness (Destiny?). The members are an interesting crowd. Unlike the US where there’s more of an even spread, gym-goers here belong to one of two poles: noticeably out of shape or on steroids. I mean… in shape. But for realz, (Did I really just say that?) two of the trainers at my gym must be on steroids. Or if not steroids, they’re on something else. The bigger one must weigh over 300 pounds. That’s huge! But who knows, maybe the sheer terror that I experience will coax me into working harder in the gym. Really liking the gym so far, just a long commute!

We’re having a surprise birthday party for one of the girls in our group so I should get going. I haven’t been on the internet since Thursday but I should be able to post this when I get to school tomorrow (Monday).

Tomorrow’s going to be a laugh, I have class from 11:00-20:00. I’m pretty sure that would be illegal in the US. Welcome to Russia, Alex!

More Pictures

Sorry, those ended up backwards. Hopefully I'll have a chance to fix them later. But more now some pictures of my house...

My bed:

And my wardrobe:

The view out my window:

The Kitchen:

Bathroom (not a great picture, it's tiny):

And my student ID. Legit.

The Black Lung

For the last two weeks I’ve been counting the number of days I’ve managed to exercise, as opposed to the number that I haven’t. While I do sometimes feel stressed because I haven’t got my fix, I’m starting to think that it’s a good thing I’ve taken the first two weeks pretty easy. On Wednesday I’ll get my gym membership and I can kick off again, with two weeks of rest at my back.

That all said, I did go running on Friday. We were warned early on that Russians will stare if you go running in the city. They think you’re weird. But I guess running is pretty weird when you think about it. You expend all that effort to end up exactly where you started. Russians will play football and some will go to the gym, but no one just runs. I guess in two months I won’t need to think this over any more. It gets too cold to move that fast. Anyway, I managed to get running through the busy streets, dodging old ladies and those people who are too shocked to make room for you on the sidewalk. It only took ten minutes before I started regretting my week of laziness. Then after twenty minutes I realised that the air I was breathing was 40 degrees colder than a week before and composed mostly of car exhaust. After about thirty I found myself thinking referencing that Zoolander scene with the Black Lung (Note to elderly readers: Pop culture reference). The run was an experience, and one that I hope I will have to repeat only once more. I know my gym has filtered water, maybe they’ll filter the air too?

So that was Friday in the afternoon. What did I get up to this weekend? On Saturday we visited that Soviet market as planned. On arrival it was as immense and awesome as planned. There are a series of layers to the market, through which a newcomer must venture before he can reach the center. The center is where all the Russians are. Once you’ve braved the touristy boutiques, you cross some train tracks and walk through an alley. Then you pass a series of permanent shops. Then the shops based out of shacks, which I assume are only open in the summer. Then the stalls, then people with goods laid out on a blanket, then people who just have a pile of stuff that sits in the mud. I’ve described it in three lines, but understand that this market went on for miles. One person in our group bought a guitar, another a leather jacket, and one a rouble note from 1901. A friend of mine had an antique given to them for free. I spent the first two hours just wandering, soaking in atmosphere and marveling at the sheer amount of stuff. I say stuff because there’s really no other way to describe it. There was food, there were clothes, there was a guy selling rusty old tools. I saw DVDs on sale for 7 cents. I saw a guy buying a samurai sword and an uncomfortable group of people huddled around a table of pornography. Even my want to see Red Army weapons was satisfied. There, in front of me, was a man chipping rust off a mortar from the Second World War. Take a moment to imagine literally anything in the world that you want. This market had it. That said, I was so overwhelmed that I didn’t end up buying anything and I will need to go back for those Russian shirts… Saturday was quite an experience.

Sunday was another great day – Now that I think about it the whole weekend was pretty great. On Sunday we took a hydrofoil to Peterhoff as a group. The history of this country mansion starts and ends with Peter the Great. Peter visited Versailles and came back and built a Russian one. We spent the whole day there and saw maybe a third of the estate. I’m writing this in my room, once again without internet, but I hope to have the chance to upload some of my photos when I’m next at school. The palace is huge and deserves mention alongside the Winter Palace. There are over 200 fountains on the estate, all of which are powered by the force of gravity. No pumps involved. Almost everything is painted with gold. There are smaller mansions that surround the centre mansion, each of which is bigger than our house in Summit. One of these was built precisely so that guests would never see the palace servants (You dropped a dinner request down through the table, and your dish would pop out of the table in front of you, transported by an individual plate elevator.) Another was built to emulate another French mansion that Peter had decided he needed a copy of. It was 55 degrees and windy all day, but Peterhoff was no less than incredible. In the words of one of my new friends “In America we just don’t have anything as cool as this”. I guess we just missed that era.

I’ll really cut to the chase now. Had classes today, more essays, future promises hard work but loads of free time, excited, gym soon, signing up for classes, weather sucks, about to go for blinis and honey beer. I hope you’re all well and sorry for such a long post! Hope you made it through it all. Pictures to below...

Don't drink the water!

This has been one of our biggest challenges the first week in St. Petersburg. The water here isn't potable - if you drink it you're sure to get Giardia - and everything else costs money. My solution so far has been to boil water before I drink it, but I still have to wait for it to cool before pouring it into my water bottle. It's the small things like this that make you realise how privileged we are to live in the States!
And bigger things like having an internet connection. I'm in that cafe again. The one with the russian pop. I've just noticed there's also an ashtray next to me, I guess provided in the hope that I won't dump my cigarette embers onto the keyboard. Honestly, are there people out there who do that? Well, it's nice here nonetheless. And last time I didn't even have to pay. (I'm pretty sure I didn't use the system properly, but the attendant couldn't be bothered to explain it to me). It's pouring outside and has been for the whole day. But after many years of dealing with such weather in London, I have come to the realisation that my skin is waterproof. (Don't look so puzzled, your skin is waterproof too) Nonetheless, it's not much fun to walk around in the rain so I'll probably spend the rest of the evening inside. Maybe for the best, I actually have a lot of work to do. Russian here is hard!
So it's been a couple days since my last post. Our RSL course (Russian as a Second Language) started on Monday and since then I've been pretty busy. Our general schedule is class from 10-1, lunch on our own, and then a meeting and afternoon excursion until around 4:30. Today we visited the Russian National Library and yesterday the Saint Petersburg University library. In the evenings I have homework to do, so I'm not so stir crazy as I was briefly this weekend. How I long for those days... I'm not used to having so much Russian swirling around in my head and it's beginning to take a toll! I was totally exhausted when I got home today. Not that a 90 minute tour of the library was particularly energizing... Tonight might have to be an early night.
Apart from that, I feel like people in our group are beginning to ease up a bit. A friend noted today that although orientation only started 9 days ago, it already seems like we've known eachother for months. Totally true. A lot has happened to us in the last two weeks! This morning I woke up in Russia. Everyone here speaks a different language. They eat weird foods, most things are polluted, and I still can't figure out why anyone would use a gypsy cab as a mode of transport. It's surprisingly easy to forget that much of our world has been completely overturned. I'm getting off topic... I was talking about our group. The people in it are great. There's a lot of energy whenever we're not in a library, and I'm already feeling intellectually challenged. That said, there are still many more Russians to befriend. I can't wait until the start of the semester! (They know how to find the private rooftop bars. They could be nice too.)
What else? Well it's been 7 days since I did any cardio and I'm really starting to feel it. I need to find a gym close to home at a reasonable price. Then I will be truly happy! As for upcoming adventures, I have an essay and presentation due tomorrow, and some grammar and phonetic work (way easier) due for Friday. This Sunday we're taking a hydrofoil to Peterhoff, which might best be described as a Russian attempt at Versailles. The fountains are truly incredible, you should check out the photos on google images. This Saturday is a totally free day, so we're obviously going to go check out the enormous Soviet market in the north of the city. Apparently you can get all sorts of old stuff. I use the word 'stuff' because I really have no idea what we'll find there. Anywhere from the plain t-shirts that I need to buy to Red Army trenchcoats and submarines. Sky is the limit! As you can tell I'm pretty excited.
Well that's all from me for tonight. Hopefully I'll get another post together this week and have more internet time next week. Hope you're all well. Пока!

Хочешь гулять?

As I mentioned in my last post, this is something all Russians do. In Russia you can spend an entire afternoon wandering aimlessly, making detours for food and drink when desired. What an awesome way to spend an afternoon or evening! It’s been a great way to get to know people and to see the sights.

After a seven-hour stroll, I have a better appreciation for how my neighbourhood fits into the social structure of Saint Petersburg and, in more basic terms, where my house is. Chances are you won’t begin to recognise the names of people that I throw into these blog posts, but today was spent with Sarah, Meg, Scott, Jackie and Steph. And of course Jackie’s host sister, Валерия (Valerie), who served as our tour guide and dictionary. I’d love to add a link to google maps to record our route but alas, I am without internet.

I got back from our stroll around 8 (I should mention that the sun sets at around 11pm here) and dinner quickly ensued. As last night, half a chicken breast and cooked vegetables- eggplant, tomatoes, onions and garlic – made it onto my plate. With pickles, cucumber, salad, barley, and bread with a caviar spread on the side, dinner made for quite a satisfying meal. As always, tea and pastries accompanied. Last night I ate separately from the family, as my host parents were eating later with friends. I was glad to be included today and did my best to follow conversation at the table. Perhaps in five months time I will be more capable, but tonight it was a stretch! That said, if Russian class involved the four shots with which I was provided, comprehension would be exponentially more difficult.

So what’s on my figurative plate for tonight? Very little. (I should mention that I’m writing this in my room at home, sans internet, and will upload at school tomorrow. (Photos of my room to come!)) So tonight – Chances are I’ll get started on Great Expectations, and I might do some work on that final project for Pintley, which is now somewhat overdue. No doubt one of these two should put me to sleep!

Tomorrow promises more time at Smolny, but also a great deal more free time. We have an exam of sorts, an assessment of our language level so that we can be placed in appropriate classes. Obviously I’d like to do my best, but it’s nothing to worry about. In the afternoon I’m hoping to investigate the gym-scene. Gyms here are known by the foreign term “Fitnesse Kloob”. One can only assume that this name was coined in Russia many centuries ago.

Here comes Yemilia, the family cat. He’s been very friendly so far. As always it’s great to have a pet around. And cats are particularly curious creatures. And there he goes. До завтра, Емелия. Speaking to a pet in another language feels weird, but it is essential for communication in this relationship. After all, Russian cats speak Russian, right?

Well that’s probably it from me this evening. Slept late, ate, walked for many hours, ate, reading, and possibly more eating. I think I can get used to this life.

Здраствый Санкт-Петербург!

What a first few days it has been in St. Petersburg. I'm currently in an internet cafe on Vassilievsky Island. If this post ends up being weird, you can attribute it to the Russian pop that is engulfing this cafe.
So this afternoon I moved in with my host family. They live one street over from this cafe and a mere 10 minute walk from Smolny! As it goes, that's luxurious. The host mother, Nina, has been incredibly friendly so far. I have my own room with a high ceiling, a terrific old wardrobe in which I can cram my clothes, and a full bed that facilitates diagonal sleeping. From what I can tell she works in an employment office of sorts. The father, also Alexander (He'll go by Sasha, I'm changing back to Alexander to make things easier), is a truck driver. He's just back from a family house on the Black Sea. It sounds terrific. Really just a lot of sunbathing and work in the garden. This afternoon was spent watching TV with his shirt off. Their son Nikita, 26, has been pretty aloof so far. All in all my family is pretty legit. (Parentspeak = Authentic)
And what have I been up to for the last couple of days? We were staying in a hotel down the street from Smolny, continuing with orientation and touring the city. Thursday was, as you can imagine after the long flight from the States, exhausting. Running on 2 hours sleep, I made it all the way to 22:00. (Amazingly I was almost instantly over jetlag. I woke up at 9 the next morning and have been doing well since). We had some free time in the afternoon and wandered up and down the Neva (the main river in Saint-Petersburg), admiring the buildings and the gorgeous weather. Much of yesterday was devoted to a bus tour, which included drive-bys of the Winter Palace, the Church on Spilled Blood (the background of this blog), and the cruiser Aurora, among other greats. Last night was host to our first experience with Russian night life. As expected, beer is cheap, bars are smoky, and Russian guys are greasy. It was a great night and lined me up for a two hour nap this afternoon.
The Russian pop is really getting to me. I hope I'm still coherent.
I've spent the last half hour wandering the island (this is a favourite Russian pastime, to гулять, or stroll), and trying to figure out how to put money on my new pay-as-you-go phone. I have had little success. Tonight will probably be an early night if I can't get my phone working. That really wouldn't be the end of the world though, I'm pretty tired!

So Saint-Petersburg has given me a terrific welcome. I'm still struggling with my Russian, but my host parents are determined to teach me, and have assured me that I will be corrected on my grammatical mistakes. Apart from that, I'm working on my street face. It's important to look expressionless on the street, otherwise people will think you're weird. I've had a couple people come up and speak to me in Russian on the street, which has been encouraging.

Oh, and I should mention... My host family doesn't have an internet connection so all of my communications will be from school or internet cafes. Skype dates will definitely have to happen at school, so more effort may have to go into organising them. But they are possible! I should be able to start skyping on Monday, when RSL (Russian as a Second Language) classes start.

Hope you are all well. I'm going to go figure out this phone.

Day 1

So I made it to Bard. I'm no longer in Boston, I'm no longer on vacation, and this big pile of clothes has fit into my suitcase.

The other kids in the group seem great. They're from all over the country, which for the moment is a welcome change from the type that finds its way to the Purple Valley. (You don't go to Williams??) It's been fascinating to find out how they all found their way into the Russian language. Whether it was art, family, music or just curiosity, every person so far has had an interesting answer. Tall talk for the first night, but I think this could be a terrific group of people to head to Russia with.

So what have we been up to so far? We've had an introduction to the history of the program (we study in a palace, by the way), we've done a couple bonding exercises, and we've opened up and discussed our innermost hopes and fears. Riveting. Tomorrow promises more of the same, but for now I have some free time. Bard's an odd college, maybe I'll find out more on my run.

Getting Excited

The background photo is of the church of the spilt blood in St. Petersburg. It's such a beautiful city, in such a different part of the world. I can't wait.