In which I move in with my host family

Day 3, technically. A two-day-old peanut butter sandwich tastes surprisingly good at midnight when it’s on a Mom roll. :D I’m feeling rather like a wallflower back here, but Rebecca and Kristin are having enough trouble talking to Sasha that I’m very reluctant to butt in and try my one semester’s worth of the language. We’ll see how this goes.

…oh, and apparently we have Sudoku on our Russian phones. I am still, much to my surprise (not), no good at Sudoku. Hey, here’s my chance! :)

Day 3, for real this time. 10:50 pm. What a day. What. A. Day. (I’m practicing Cyrillic typing here, so bear with all of the parentheticals, please.)

I’m writing this from the bedroom in the apartment of Lyudmila Afanasyevna M. (Людмила Афанасиевна), a professor of chemistry at Pavlov Medical School (at least, I think that’s the name). She’s hosted many times before, and she welcomed a rather confused and way overtired American girl who speaks broken Russian with open arms. I have very good feelings about this semester. :D

We spent most of the day in orientation mode, more discussions of cultural differences, health and academic policies. Honestly, most of the group was glazing over during the academic presentation; we picked our classes before hitting the ground in Russia, anyway. (We went over social do’s and don’ts in the cultural differences section; apparently women are strongly discouraged from sitting on cold surfaces, for fear that they’ll freeze their ovaries and never bear children.) But the tension grew as we drew closer to meeting our host families; maps and addresses were distributed at the same time, so we immediately mapped out who’s where in the city and swapped numbers. I lucked out with my location: I’m literally less than ten minutes from the Smolny (Смолнй) campus of St. Petersburg State University! Erica and I are actually in the same building on Tverskaya Ulitsa (Тверская Улитса), even closer to the university than to the Cherneshevskaya (Чернешевская) metro station. Ella is just across the street, and Cecilia and Irena are not very far away (and Irena’s host mother is friends with my host mother, apparently. So is Kim’s host mother). The group is really spread all over the city, from the very southern end near Moskovskaya (Московская) Station (where we were for the first two days) to the very northern part of the city. The Smolny campus of the university is pretty far to the west on our maps, while much of the group is on the eastern island, Vasilievsky Island (Василевский), near the main campus. (I got confused looking at my guidebook over break and thought we were all commuting to Vasilievsky. They’re kind of on opposite ends of the city, so it’s a very good thing CIEE didn’t have us try to find Smolny on our own.)

I’m going to be living in the room that used to belong to Lyudmila Afanasyevna’s grown son, Mikhail (Михаил) (he’s thirty). The bookcase is full of his old books, videos, and what I think are probably scrapbooks; the closet still has his belts hanging in it. As far as I understand, he doesn’t live with his mother anymore, but he comes over very frequently. (He also speaks very good English, at least from his mom’s perspective. My Russian is quite a bit worse than Lyudmila Afanasyevna’s English, but hey, we got through dinner somehow!) The combination of his and his mother’s taste in décor runs to lots of little tchotchkes throughout the apartment, a couple of dried flower arrangements, and sports equipment in this room; my phone is charging on top of a couple of hand weights. There’s also a giant stuffed gray-white owl on the wall above the bed, which I imagine would be rather fearsome in the dark. It’s okay, though. I’ve named him Volodya. We shall be great friends…won’t we, Volodya?

Lyudmila Afanasyevna (never just Lyudmila, even on the blog) is an inch or two shorter than me, blonde, and probably about sixty. It’s just her and me in the apartment. We talked about our families and interests and discovered that we’re both very much into classical music; she has plans to take me to the St. Petersburg Philharmonic sometime, which would be VERY exciting. :D She has been teaching chemistry to medical students for thirty years, married one of her colleagues from the medical school, and divorced when Mikhail (Misha/Миша) was twelve. I felt very awkward upon asking if there was a Mr. M and finding out she’s divorced, but she was very frank about it. She definitely believes in the strength of Russian women, and in the two and a half hours I’ve known her, I can see why. : ) She wouldn’t let me help with the dishes tonight, but ‘maybe tomorrow,’ she said. I don’t think she believes in a woman allowing anyone to do everything for her, the way Russian men seem to be expected to. It’s a comfortingly familiar outlook.

Dinner was an interesting mix of cuisines: hot dogs (which come in a string and are smaller than the American standard) with fried cabbage, some sort of mixed vegetable salad including beets, another raw vegetable salad with sour cream (smetana/сметана) for dressing, and a couple of types of garlic sauce to try with the hot dogs. (I can’t remember the name right now, but I’ll figure it out in the morning. Whatever it is, the Finnish version comes in a tube and is thicker and less spicy; the Russian version comes in a jar and is heavy on the garlic, and something else…maybe horseradish. Not easily identifiable, but VERY good.) Afterwards came stewed fruits (jam), which Lyudmila Afanasyevna cooks herself (it’s like American jam, only chunky and not as overpoweringly sweet); little tea biscuits; and actual tea. “Not strong tonight, but in the morning, strong,” we managed to work out. (My host gift of two-and-a-half pounds of Starbucks coffee was greatly, greatly appreciated. I don’t drink coffee, but she does, and she had a jar of instant in the cupboard. The American University mug I brought joined her collection of mugs in a little kitchen nook; it was perfect! I’m wondering if Misha likes American sports, and if so, he’ll receive a couple of my smaller host gifts…maybe the Terrible Towel.)

My dear host mother actually has to go to the medical school very early tomorrow (seven-thirty—on a Saturday! Ugh!) to proctor an exam, so she told me I’m on my own for breakfast, after showing me where everything is and giving me full permission to use the (gas) stove. I was very flattered, actually; I understand that her schedule necessitates this kind of a welcome, but I also consider it a sign of great trust. (That being said, I will probably stay away from the stove. I know my limits, and cooking is one of them.) We’re due at Kazansky Sabor (rough transliteration of Казанскй Совор/Kazansky Cathedral) at 11 to start a bus tour of the city; I think we’re splitting up and going with Jarlath to take the tour in English. (We did manage to see a good deal of the city tonight while dropping off students. Nevsky Prospekt/Невский Проспект…the frozen and snowed-over Neva river…a couple of the bridges…it’s all…wow.) I’m meeting Erica and her host mother downstairs at 10, so it’s probably time to sign off and enjoy a real night’s sleep for the first time in four days. G’night, all!