In which we find the IKEA in St. Petersburg. Who knew?

Sunday, 10:48 am. Good grief, do my feet hurt. The Dom Knigi employees seemed rather surprised to see a group of seven Americans show up at about 8 pm, but they voiced no objection to our hanging out and delightedly testing our Russian language skills for two hours. Several of the group bought notebooks and school supplies, making me feel slightly superior for packing mine. :) (My host mother was out for the evening; I got home at about ten-thirty, roughly ten minutes before she did.) Russian bookstores aren’t quite as intentionally welcoming as Barnes and Noble or Borders; there’s no drinking coffee and sitting for a couple of hours reading in here. Dom Knigi is amazingly well stocked, though. The city library is open at very inconvenient hours, so I sense that I may be visiting the bookstore fairly often when I’m homesick for a room full of books.

I feel like I should have noticed this previously, but I’m a little leery about doing my laundry here, actually. We were warned about the parasites in the water, but we weren’t warned that it’s oddly yellowish and smells like oatmeal. For showering, this isn’t an issue with some decent shampoo; for washing clothes, I’m not quite so sure. I still have a couple days’ worth of socks, though, so we’ll see how this goes. (I’m not sure the oatmeal smell would be a bad thing, actually, as whatever clothes I wear out in public—anywhere!—end up smelling like smoke. I’m rather surprised at how many of the American students on this program smoke; I’m not the least bit surprised at how many of the Russians smoke. I don’t, though, and I’ve got to find some way to smell like I don’t! :P)

We’re meeting at 2 at Kazansky Sabor for a “scavenger hunt” through the city; I’ll write more later, once I figure out just what this entails. All I know is, more opportunities to take pictures! Hooray! :D

10:25 pm. Oy. Gevalt. The ‘scavenger hunt’, I have to say, was not an overwhelming success. But, it’s over, and I am full of warm food and sitting down for the evening.

First of all, if you actually want students to show up to an event, don’t make it optional. Out of the forty-five or so students on the program, ten showed up for the scavenger hunt. We split into two- and three-person teams, received a list from Jarlath (who, apparently for good reasons, was twenty-five minutes late), and set off to traverse the entire city for three hours and take photos. Morgan, Daniel, and I tramped all over the city, translating the list as we went, ended up backtracking five times or so, and generally familiarized ourselves with most of the city. So, from that respect, if that was one of our goals, the event was a success.

What wasn’t so successful was the meeting at the end. We were given three hours and told to meet at the IKEA in a mega-mall in the northern part of the city; what we figured out well into the process was that it takes a good hour to get from Nevsky Prospekt, where we started, to this mall, way the heck up on the Blue Line (second-to-last stop, and then a shuttle from there). I mean, it’s a good thing that we know how to get to this mall, but it’s VERY much out of the way for a final meeting spot. Dan actually went home and left me and Morgan as the representatives of our team. None of the eight who remained were particularly happy with Jarlath as we all rolled in. I stayed about ten minutes, then headed home with an understandably impatient Zoltan, leaving him at Ploshchad Vosstaniya and catching a trolleybus back to my street.

Lyudmila Afanasyevna spent the day at her dacha, skiing and enjoying the winter in the country, so she was out fairly late as well; serendipitously, she met me on the stairs as I was having trouble with my keys. We ate a very late, very large, very tasty dinner, and then both retired for some reading for our classes. So, after an adventurous weekend, I am retiring early and looking forward to ten hours off my feet. Back to history and grammar tomorrow! :)