Motherland, Day 2

Day 2, 5:55 pm. Oh, frabjous day! I have, through the grace of God and Irina Borisovna, been reunited with my luggage! I can stop schlepping my entire messenger bag in place of a purse! I have shampoo, and a hair dryer, and proper shoes again! HALLELUJAH! (And lucky me, actually. Brenna and Evan are still suitcaseless. Evan’s looking forward to his first proper shave in four days.)

…yes, I am slightly one-track-minded right now. The reunion took place all of five minutes ago, while the entire day has been busy. But the advantage of my purse and proper shoes instead of Wellies sort of takes precedence in my mind right now. :) Dinner’s in five minutes, so I’m gonna get going, but I’ll write more later.

8:51 pm. Back in my room for longer than five minutes for the first time today—the sign of a day well spent. The morning was the true orientation period, where our dear English-speaking Jarlath threw all the health and safety information at us at once. I understood when I got here that St. Petersburg’s not exactly an ideal city in which to be a young woman, so it wasn’t exactly a shock, but…still. That’s a lot of warnings to observe all at once.

We got our first real taste of Russian weather today after the lectures, when we visited a memorial to the defenders of Leningrad during WWII. A sobering introduction to the city, but a lovely sight; complete with sweeping music playing through speakers, it felt like walking onto the set of a movie. Schindler’s List, perhaps. (Note to self: ask Irina Borisovna the meaning of the red carnations that were laid around the base of the statue. Russians place special meaning on flowers; I wonder if this was one of them.)

Jarlath then took us (the group that desperately needed the tour in English) to the Moskovskaya metro to show us the ropes, and the communal box office (must remember this!). Nadya and I did manage to get hit up for change in the five minutes we were down there. (I’d love to make friends in St. Petersburg, but not that quickly, and not that way, thanks.) The suggestion is to wait until we’re moved in with our host families before purchasing any sort of monthly pass, depending on where we are and what forms of public transport we’re taking. We move in tomorrow evening; the anticipation is palpable. (And I now have my host gifts, so I feel even better about this!)

After the tour de force in the Metro came the excursion to purchase Russian cell phones, and the SIM cards back at the hotel. Maybe this is just a college-student thing, but I feel so much better having a phone, even if it’s not the one I schlep around at home and drop on a regular basis. I’m trying to get used to wearing a watch again, but checking the time on a phone just seems so much more natural. A ruble per text message is impressively cheap, as is a ruble per minute. And, apparently, it’s possible to use these with an international calling card, and incoming calls are free…Verizon said my calling card won’t work from a cell phone, but it’s probably worth a try anyway.

The rest of the evening: dinner, and getting blood drawn for HIV tests. I’m not exactly sure why this last part took an hour and a half, but we ended up first in a back corner of the fourth floor of the hotel, then in the basement, just kind of waiting around for an impressive amount of time. More than one of us started singing clips from Sweeney Todd; after the first group didn’t return for a while, we swore they were being taken to the basement to make pies. Or pelmeni…or shevarma, actually. (Actually, the blood drawing was happily uneventful, except for observing the doctor’s fantastic mullet. They’re very popular over here. Wes named this one the Mullet of Justice.)

Those of us who don’t need to go buy cell phones have the evening off, so I’m going to shut off my Spanish music mix and see if anyone wants to come to the post office with me, and maybe to the produkti around the corner. Possibly more to come depending on the adventurousness of the night; in any case, day 2 of the adventure of a lifetime has been a day well spent. :D

10:20 pm. Back in the room. Didn’t manage to find the post office, but Matt, Kristin (one of the Kristins) and I did manage to walk the streets of our adopted city without being molested or robbed, or slipping on the ice (well, at least without slipping to the point of falling). We even managed to ask directions! (We got one-word replies that were not terribly helpful, but hey, they understood!) Confidence exudes from us the way sweat would if it wasn’t nearly freezing to our skin.

I thought I knew bitter cold back in DC. Sweet Mother Macree, was I wrong. Less than five minutes in St. Petersburg in January and your fingers and ears are starting to tingle ominously. I’m wrapped up in an L.L. Bean coat that’s supposed to be even warmer than down; a fleece-lined hat; micro-tek (whatever that means) insulated gloves; boots with fleece liners; long underwear, jeans, two sweaters, and a scarf. And my fingers are STILL just barely thawing. I need to learn some good Russian expletives; the English ones I have aren’t doing the job. Time to take a very warm shower (with actual shampoo! Hurrah!) and then probably crawl into bed.

11:58 pm. Rebecca and Kristin brought a guy they met at McDonalds back to the room with them. I really, really don't know enough Russian to talk to Sasha, but I'm enjoying listening in on their conversation about music and picking up the odd word or three. :) Only problem here will be showering. Ah, well, we'll see.

Motherland, Day 1

6:53 pm Moscow time. Slept on and off on the flight over; wasn’t intending to, but I think the sight of all that space in the row made me crash. The CIEE group got off the Munich plane together and slowly aggregated with all of the other groups; it took until dinner to get all forty-five of us together, but we managed it. : )

It appears that I’m the one schmuck on this trip who arrived without her checked luggage, but, hey, it had to happen to somebody. (UPDATE, as of 9 pm: apparently there are three of us. I feel less conspicuous now.) God bless Katya, one of the program directors, who took me right through the lost-luggage process and confirmed the addresses I didn’t know yet with the customs officer. I mean, I’m in the country all of fifteen minutes, I don’t know anything except the name of the hotel, and I’m filling out forms for where to send it. Aaaaaaaargh.

The small blessing here is not having had to schlep the giant suitcase around. Thank you a thousand times, Mom, for suggesting I pack another outfit in my carry-on. The luggage is supposed to arrive on the next flight from Munich and be brought to the hotel tomorrow; in any case, I have clothes for a week, if I’m careful. Raggle fraggle razzum frazzum argh.

All forty-some of us seem to agree that the whole “I’m in Russia!” thing hasn’t hit yet. Granted, the expletive-inducing cold helped (even though we were out in it for all of a minute). But it’ll probably take until tomorrow before I realize “oh my God, I’m actually in Russia for the entire semester!” (We really do run the gamut on language skills here. The Russian Language program students were able to decipher most of Irina Borisovna’s welcoming speech, while we have at least six students who don’t know more than “please,” “thank you,” and “My name is ___.” More of God’s blessings upon Jarlath, the American program coordinator, for translating Irina’s speeches for the rest of us.)

Supposedly there are a few card games going on tonight, but after hearing that at least one of them would take place in the bar, I retired to my room to finish blogging for the day. We’re having a rearranging-my-roommate’s-suitcase party, after which I plan to shower, lay down with my mp3 player, and probably be out by ten.

Adventure of a lifetime, day 1. (Though it’ll probably be posted on day 4 or so, depending on the availability of free/cheap wireless.) Let’s see just how much this rocks, eh?