In which American musical theater nearly comes to St. Petersburg

Wednesday morning. Happiness is discovering friends’ blogs. I miss you, Becca. :D

Our Ethnic Studies homework for today was to develop an “alphabet of American symbols,” based on a similar Russian worksheet we received last class. Just to test myself, I created another alphabet beside the one I came up with. I’m not sure what it says about me, or America in general, that I can name a musical starting with every letter of the alphabet, but not a symbol. (Z? Anyone?)

8:42 pm. Finally, we’re getting close to returning to the norm of over-committing ourselves! (Hey, if you can’t do four extracurriculars at once in college, when can you do them?) We took a little excursion after classes today to the main campus of the university, where Irina Borisovna pointed out most of the facilities, helped us sign up to volunteer to teach English, and interpreted several signs for grateful, confused artsy students.

New lesson for me: apparently one of the trolleybuses that I take regularly to get to Nevsky actually goes all the way to the main campus. We left after classes from Smolny Campus, caught the 11 bus, and stayed on it the whole way across the city. In retrospect, thirty-some of us piled onto one bus was…adventuresome? Possibly not the wisest idea, anyway. I did, however, get to experience the wonder of not having to hold onto anything because I was sandwiched firmly between Matt, Adam, Fred, Liz, and Brenna. In any case, the crowd eventually thinned out enough for some of us to sit down, and when we all piled off the bus on Vasilievsky, I swear the tires groaned in relief.

Next stop: wandering around the university! One of the main buildings is called the Labyrinth, and they weren’t messing around when they named it. I have a vague idea of how to get from the bus stop outside the Philology Department to the student activities building, but that’s about it. We crossed into the building with the library at some point, passed the pool, and were collectively distracted by a large icicle that had formed on a hanging wire. The Pendulum of Death, as aptly named by Lauren, sort of set the mood for this campus. Smolny is bright, cheery, and easy to imagine nuns wandering around; the main campus would make a nun genuflect before crossing the courtyard.

We met Professor Yarushkin and signed up to teach English (and possibly our other foreign languages) to Russian students, which I’ll be able to write more about once it actually starts; then Irina Borisovna led the chorally and orchestrally inclined of us to the student union and translated the signs for us. I think orchestra auditions are tomorrow at 6:30, which will be both fantastic and a rather tight fit, as we’re going to Peter and Paul Fortress at three-thirty. The question of how to get my hands on a viola before then will be resolved tomorrow. I have a phone number for the orchestra manager (at least that’s who I assume Angelina is), and some key phrases from Irina Borisovna, so let’s see how I do! (Choral auditions are Friday evening. I’ll figure out by then if I can in fact participate in both…