“Picture with monkey: 100 ruble”
After some more orientation meetings on Friday, we finally got to head to our host families. The ride from the hotel to the apartment was quite an experience… it’s pretty obvious why CIEE tells students not to rent their own car, the streets are a warzone. I don’t know if it’s because the slush covers any paint on the road or if it’s always like this, but nobody really keeps inside a lane.
I was dropped off first from our group because the apartment I’m staying in is further south in the city than most others. I’m now living on 6th Krasnoarmeyskaya ul in a third-floor apartment with death traps looming above:
My host mother Svetlana Borisevna and her “koshka” (kitty) Yassa (who will undoubtedly serve for some great lolcat photos) greeted me when I arrived at the apartment. I’m staying in her son Kostya’s old room, which is really well decorated! Fantasy books, photos, and a silver sculpture of Vladimir Lenin line one side and more Russian books, a CPU heat sink, a TCP/IP poster, and a hanging hard drive the other – I think we’d get along. Here’s my bed area and the view outside the window:
My first home-cooked Russian dinner started without a moment to waste! Potato soup, rice, chicken, and salad olivie was on the menu. Svetlana and I talked about both our hometowns and families (“Moyu sestru zovut Taleen, kak stolitsa Estonii – My sister’s name is Taleen, like the capital of Estonia”)… she first guessed that I’m Greek, and if my name were Alec Ananopilosis I might have played along. Communicating is… interesting. I think I understand about 75% of what she says, the other 25% either gets a smile and nod if no response is required otherwise it’s “Ya ne ponimayu” (I don’t understand). Svetlana can read English but doesn’t know too much vocabulary, so she has a handy dictionary to help me understand once in a while. My dialogue on the other hand is pretty simple for now, she says I’ll be a pro by May though.
Friday morning I watched the Rugrats movie in Russian with my “kasha” (porridge) breakfast (I need to watch more children’s cartoons, they’re way easier to understand). At 10:30 we headed out to meet the CIEE group for a city tour. The walk to the metro station was my first real look at the surrounding area because it was already dark when I arrived the night before. The metro station (Tekhnologicheskaya stantsia) is VERY close by, so that’s going to be a big convenience. We took the metro (full of blank-faced people in fuzzy hats) to Petersburg’s hub, Nevskiy prospekt, and met everyone at “Kazanskiy sobor” (Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan) to board the tour bus. We drove to most of the major sites of the city – palace after palace, church after church! St. Petersburg is a very beautiful city… there is only one modern-looking building, everything else looks like it came from the 19th century (and it pretty much did). The main river flowing through Petersburg, the Neva, is frozen over and covered in snow right now, so it makes things look even nicer. Unfortunately I forgot to take my camer, but I’ve got plenty of time left to take photos. We also got to see the university where we’ll be studying, which is the political science department behind the Smolny cathedral (not at Smolny College like I said before). The cathedral is amazing, and the building I’ll be studying in is just as ornate.
That night at dinner I met Svetlana’s husband Andrey. We had dinner together and watched the Nigeria vs. Algeria soccer game then “Perevozchik” (Transporter… Jason Statham is surprisingly less badass when dubbed in Russian). Unlike what some of the other students in the program reported about their host fathers, Andrey is really friendly and talkative. We mostly talked about the sports teams in Petersburg and Los Angeles (and how I’m supposed to hate on the Moscow soccer team and its crazy fans).
Here are some more photos from a walking tour (Nevskiy prospekt, The Hermitage, …aaaand monkeys dressed as babies)
