In which my host mother nearly punches a bs driver

Day 4. 5:45 am. Damn jet lag. Why am I wide awake two and a half hours before I need to be? Grrrrr.

8:55 am. Notes on Russian apartment living:
-As I sort of expected, there is a washer in the apartment, but not a dryer. What I didn’t expect was to look up while taking a shower and see clotheslines strung over the shower. Much better than stringing them outside. :P
-Russian toilet paper bears a very strong resemblance to American paper towels.
-When entering a Russian home, you take off your shoes at the door (which I do in the States anyway) and put on tapechki (тапечки), which are house slippers. I have to say, this is an amazingly practical custom. Not only does it imply respect for the separation of home and the outside world, but it keeps the floors (mostly) free of slush and grime, and it also protects your feet from cold Russian floors in the morning. Dear God, that floor is cold.

Good news, Mom! I’m learning how to cook on a gas stove and haven’t managed to burn anything or blow anything up yet! I’m on my own for breakfast this morning, but Lyudmila Afanasyevna explained something about breakfast last night…and the explanation involved chicken broth, rice, and the word ‘porridge.’ I’m not entirely sure that boiling the rice in some chicken broth until it falls apart is quite what she meant, but that’s what I’m trying. And hey, if it doesn’t work out, I have only my own culinary aptitude to blame, right? :) Another breakfast innovation: tea with Russian jam (or at least the liquid from it). I don’t usually put sugar in tea, but I could get used to this. Mmmmmmmmm.

Couple more notes from last night: Mom, apparently there is no real Russian equivalent of a technical writer. The word I was using for ‘writer’ means ‘author’, literature-wise, so the best we came up with was ‘business writer.’ Also, my whole family has very American names, but we were able to translate Molly into Masha, so that’s your name over here from now on, sis. :)

Operation Porridge was not exactly what I’d call a success, but it’s not bad. Time to finish and do the dishes, dry my hair, and meet Erica and her host mother at ten. Next stop, bus tour of the city! :D

4:22 pm. Just got home. Lyudmila Afanasyevna is apparently still at work, so I just came in and donned my tapechki (and wiped up the floor). The group is trying to coordinate plans for this evening, but we all need to talk to our host moms first, so for now I’m just relaxing.

We met at Kazansky Cathedral for the bus tour pretty much first thing today. Erica’s host mother is the host family coordinator, so she needed to arrive at 10:30 rather than 11:00 for the Area Studies students. It was actually pretty awesome, though, because several of the early arrivers had time to step inside Kazansky Sabor! Cameras are forbidden inside, which is perfectly understandable but also a shame, because it’s a little overwhelming to try to describe it. It’s been a long while since I’ve been inside a church that ornate. Gold leaf everywhere, jeweled icons, mosaics, the paintings on the ceiling, the candles…wow. I haven’t been to an actual service yet, obviously, but apparently the main focus of a Russian church is the lighting of candles/incense before icons; there are no pews. There was even a live choir singing for the little prayer service that was being conducted (at least, it looked little). It was (not to sound sacrilegious in my word choice) magical.

But, I’m getting off track. Bus tour. Right. As far as I understand, we really did tour most of St. Petersburg, with a very nice guide named Yulia pointing out lots of landmarks and letting us stop a few times to take pictures. We did learn (rather late in the tour) that taking pictures is forbidden outside the former KGB building (very imposing place, with six underground floors where most of the dirty work took place), and in the Metro. As beautiful as some of the stations are, it’s considered a strategic area, so taking pictures of it gets you a 300-ruble fine and suspicion of being a terrorist (or a dumb tourist). I’ll buy some postcards instead.

We explored all the major islands, crossed over at least three or four rivers, passed a good three dozen churches, and had a couple dozen museums pointed out to us as well. I’m not quite sure what I’m doing about putting photos on the internet; I’ll post a link once I have one. It’s breathtaking, mind-blowing, feet-numbing…a little of everything, really. (Well, no, a lot of feet-numbing.) We didn’t stop anywhere for more than ten minutes, but all of our brains are already fizzing with ideas of where we want to go first. Actually, for me, I have enough ideas fizzing around that I don’t know where to start. :)

Oh, and one of the sweetest parts of the day? Blini for lunch. :D They’re sort of halfway between crepes and injera (closer to crepes), but they’re bigger than crepes and they don’t form a ball in your stomach the way injera does. They’re plate-sized thin pancakes filled with pretty much anything you want, available from little kiosks on the street, served warm, and they’re SO GOOD. I know that Lyudmila Afanasyevna said that dinner will be pork, so I didn’t want to order pork on a blin…and I ended up getting one with a banana and chocolate sauce. Such a guilty pleasure, but, oh my goodness, was it divine. I sense that blini are going to be lunch fairly often. :D

As of now, it’s just me in the apartment, going through my photos and letting a cup of tea steep in the kitchen (whoops, that reminds me, I forgot about it!). I also painted part of the back of my phone with gold nail polish so I can tell it apart from everyone else’s. I’ll write more later if we end up going somewhere interesting. :) A few of us are trying to find a Russian church service to attend tomorrow before the scheduled walking tour at noon. Keeping my fingers crossed!

10:52 pm. Rather an eventful four hours. Lyudmila Afanasyevna finally made it home from a full day of giving exams at about ten minutes of seven. I wasn’t particularly worried, except for the fact that I had two phone numbers and no idea what they were. We managed to confirm within five minutes of her getting home and are now on the same page…day late, but hopefully not a ruble short. Dinner was a vast assortment of simple but very tasty food. I did discover that my host mother believes in natural medicine, to an extent: she puts ginger in her tea and eats it when she reaches the bottom of the cup, and she also chews raw garlic. The former, I can definitely do. The latter is going to take some getting used to. If you’ve never had raw garlic, imagine biting down on a peppercorn, but multiply it by about twenty. Ergh.

After dinner, Lyudmila Afanasyevna was kind enough to take me on a tour of our neighborhood. I am the luckiest girl on this program to be within an easy ten-minute walk of classes. (I can’t remember street names right now, but the route is easy enough: past the pharmacy, through the construction site by the regional governor’s office, and across the street in the direction of the huge blue-and-white cathedral.) She also took me to the American consulate on Furshtskaya Ulitsa (or something like that), to the Cherneshevskaya metro station (about a twenty-five-minute easy walk, through the beautiful Tauride Gardens!), and to the grocery store just down the street. She decided that we would take a marshrutka (sort of an informal taxi-bus) back to Tverskaya Ulitsa, but apparently the driver had changed from his normal route…I swear they were going to come to blows in another minute. No Kazakh taxi driver is going to mess with Lyudmila Afanasyevna. (We took a regular bus.)

We got back well after ten-thirty, so it’s time to hit the sack. I’m visiting a Catholic church on Nevsky Prospekt, St. Catherine’s, with Katie and Cecilia tomorrow, so if I’m going to shower beforehand, the alarm is set for 7:30 (ugh). Signing off!