Departure day

Couldn't get onto the internet in Dulles, so I'm loading a couple of posts at once. Hi Mom and Dad! :)

4:40 pm. Waiting outside Gate C2 at Dulles. Maybe I’m just paranoid about international air travel, but checking in was surprisingly easy. Then again, after we spent most of the past two days carefully weighting and reweighing my suitcases to make sure even Lufthansa won’t have a problem with them (weight OR volume), I checked the bigger suitcase and brought the smaller one (which I’ve named Vladimir) and the messenger bag with me with no trouble at all. Heck, nobody even asked to check the liquids. There’s something to be said for flying on a Tuesday afternoon…or maybe for looking like a slightly confused college student. Being female probably didn’t hurt either.

Oddly, Gate C2 has the smallest waiting area of any I passed (and was all the way at the bloody other end of the airport from the check-in terminal; they had us take a train across the airport), even though it’s a 250-person flight. (I think most of the passengers are in the C1 waiting area. I’m sitting on the floor with my friend the netbook—part of this complete study abroad experience. :D) We’re supposed to start boarding in fifteen minutes, so I really have nothing else to do except blog. Pardon my rambling, please.

I’ve lived at home for most of my college experience, so leaving home and my parents to head five thousand miles away is a really, really weird experience. Mom and Dad aren’t going to know what to do with themselves now; I hear rumors of remodeling the kitchen (though Dad denies everything). For myself…I’m trying to figure out if it’s possible to be homesick before you even leave the gate. I talked to all of my grandparents this morning, as well as my sister. Nobody’s quite sure what to make of this trip; that includes me. The furthest away from home I’ve ever been previously was Mexico, and that was for…what, a week?...in eighth grade, with fourteen other middle schoolers and two teachers. An eight-hour flight to Germany, followed by a three-hour flight into St. Petersburg, by myself is a little mind-warping.

And I left my cell at home, so I can’t call my parents and tell them I made it through all right. Oh well. Guess that’ll wait until tomorrow in Russia.

There’ll be another post soon, from the airport in Munich. Farewell for now, my friends! :)

Musings on bending the laws of physics

Ooohh, exciting! Nine degrees and snowing in Petersburg! The warmest temperature I've seen yet!
...and they still haven't gotten the Christmas snow cleaned up. God bless the city government, who purchased 2,000 snow shovels to give out to St. Petersburg residents...all 4.7 million of them. :)

The organization coordinating our semester abroad suggested packing comfort food; for me, that means a jar of peanut butter and a large plastic bag full of herbal tea. It struck me as I packed the Jif that I don't know what there is in Russia on which to eat it. Peanut butter pancakes, anyone?

We've taken over my sister's room as packing central, and I'm playing Celtic music while debating which socks can be squeezed in where and trying to figure out how to roll a dress shirt. Packing. It's fascinating! (Anyone with ideas on how to reach the fourth dimension in terms of physical space, please share!)

Off to see if I can fit Anna Karenina in my purse, then shopping for a bathroom scale that's more accurate than 'within ten pounds, more or less.' Ta-ta for now!

In which four months are condensed into two suitcases

And we haven't even weighed them yet.

Your task: to pack everything you'll need for four months, in a climate colder than any you've ever experienced, into one thirty-inch suitcase and one nineteen-inch carry-on. (Oh, and your purse. And no, taking a purse large enough to transport a toddler is not an option.)

Your temperature range to pack for: according to Wikipedia, about 16-60 degrees Fahrenheit. Then again, it hasn't been above zero once in the past week. Just goes to show that you can't always rely on Wikipedia, I guess.

The particularly entertaining facet of the evening was the two very different packing philosophies within the family.
1) "You can probably wear each sweater three times before washing it, right?"
2) "Take your swimsuit! Oh, what if you go to the gym or something? Won't you need sneakers?"
The swimsuit's not dry yet, and I've foregone the sneakers, but I think I've packed enough sweaters to only need to wear them twice before washing. As I understand it, private washers are fairly common; private dryers are not. I'm hoping that the traditional clotheslines hanging outside the windows aren't still in vogue in Petersburg...my sweaters will shatter from the ice!

As it is, I've packed most of my clothes, the hair dryer, the shoes/boots, and my textbooks...but not the socks yet. I'll be very lucky to find the room for them...or maybe I'll just wear the boot warmers for the entire semester. Eh? :)

Of Fish and Frostbite, Introduction

You have entered the study abroad blog of an American college junior spending the semester in St. Petersburg. Welcome!

I figured I'd start by making a list of the assorted advice I've received from friends and family. I'm not the first of my friends to study abroad, but I'm definitely the first to pick St. Petersburg rather than, say, Paris or Madrid. Everyone I talk to seems to have a very different impression of Russia, as evidenced by the bits and pieces catalogued below:

-Don't drink the water. (Thank you, State Department.) I assume that's why they drink so much tea...
-Don't buy anything that comes in cologne bottles. If you're intending to buy cologne, it might be cheap vodka. If you're intending to buy cheap vodka, it might very well be cologne.
-Sip the vodka, then eat the pickle. Sip the vodka, eat the pickle.
-Alternately, skip the vodka and just eat the pickles. (Hey, I like pickles.)
-Never accept a drink from anyone with a tongue piercing. (I assume that's not Russia-specific.)
-Don't get in a taxi by yourself. Practical advice for women everywhere.
-Carry an umbrella EVERYWHERE. I mean, the city was built on a marsh, so wet weather might be a good thing to anticipate.
-Keep your documents on you at all times, preparing to be stopped by the police. And be nice to the police when you're stopped; you'll get much further that way.
-Carry an extra plastic bag with you; you'll never know when you'll need it.
-Also, carry tissues, as they're apparently in rather short supply over there.

The advice to 'stay warm' has so many variations that it deserves its own paragraph. Granted, I'm going for the semester where the weather gets better as we go along, rather than worse. Still, though...it's about -13 degrees Fahrenheit over there right now, the city was hit by massive snowstorms around Christmas that still haven't been cleared up, and there was a fatality on Wednesday thanks to an icicle. (How does that work? Blunt trauma, or stabbing?) Rather than just a fleece hat, I'm debating a fleece-lined steel helmet. :P

Why Of Fish and Frostbite? I don't actually expect to get frostbite, but it's a very real possibility in a city that far north. And, as far as I understand, the American image of the Russian diet consisting of cabbage and beets isn't quite on target. There's also a LOT of fish. And pancakes. :)

I fly on Tuesday, and I haven't started packing yet. St. Petersburg actually limits travelers to 35 kilos of luggage total, which is, frankly, diddly squat. The adventures of fitting four months of my life into one large suitcase and a carryon will be documented in a following post, I'm sure, as well as the wonders of international air travel. :) For now, до свиданя!