Untranslateables

Monday, 10:45 am. One day of snow has undone a good week and a half of work by the St. Petersburg city sanitation department, grounds crew, or whatever they’re called. Good LORD, just walking across the Smolny campus was treacherous! :P

10:45 pm. Classes went pretty well, though we’re all rather glad not to have three hours of Russian language at ten tomorrow morning. Four class periods of Albina Vitalievna in a row can be…slightly taxing for all involved, including her, I’m sure.

Lyudmila Afanasyevna had students over, so I retired to my room after dinner and actually dozed off over my history book (whoops). I woke up about nine and walked in to see how she was doing, and we ended up talking for an hour and a half. :D It started with the fact that tomorrow is Russian Army Day, also known as Men’s Day, a national holiday. This led to a whole discussion about gender relations, which segued into the fact that her first husband was Bulgarian, and then led to her showing me photographs of her various travels. I know St. Petersburg is considered a cosmopolitan city, but it still surprised me that my host mom has been to Dubai and Thailand! :)

I’m going to start combining a couple days into one post at this point, I think, because we’re starting to settle into a routine. It’s strange to think that I’ve been here long enough to develop a routine, actually…but it’s been almost a month. Time flies like an arrow…fruit flies like a banana.