“It’s a beautiful walk… in summer”

Classes started today, and I actually feel like I’m a student again! My Tuesdays start at 11:30am, so I was able to take my time in the morning and I also got to miss rush hour on the metro. When I went to campus Monday at 8:30am, I felt like I was in March of the Penguins or something. I was crammed tightly in the train car then stepped out at the stop near Smolny cathedral (Chernyshevskaya) and shuffled with the massive crowd from the platform to the escalator. I hope there aren’t any claustrophobics in Russia.

My first day made a good impression, I think I’m going to be enjoying my courses here. Today I had grammar, conversation, and ethnic studies. Grammar is probably going to be more like the courses I took at USC. Conversation was more challenging right off the bat, so that should be an interesting class. The rest of my classes, including ethnic studies, are taught in English and are not supposed to be academically challenging but instead informational/engaging. I’m looking forward to ethnic studies, which is going to be about the different ethnic groups in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union and how conflicts between them shaped Russian history. Here’s my schedule:

  Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
10.00 – 11.30 Grammar   Arts of St. Petersburg   Grammar
11.40 – 13.10 Russian History Grammar   Russian History Conversation
13.50 – 15.20   Conversation   Conversation  
15.30 – 17.00   Ethnic Studies   Arts of St. Petersburg Ethnic Studies


Oh yeah did I also mention that my classes are in the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen?






3 Comments to ““It’s a beautiful walk… in summer””

  1. Grace Ananian 3 February 2010 at 7:36 PM #

    Wow, the pictures are unbelievable. Speaking of unbelievable….how do we know you are really there? We haven’t seen any pictures of you. I know it goes against your grain to take any pictures with humans in them, but one or two of you and your comrades, would be nice. Hahahaha.

  2. tananian 3 February 2010 at 9:10 PM #

    Oh yeah good point… Alec is so techno savvy that he could just be making all of this up from anywhere in the world!!! I demand human photos!

  3. armenananian 3 February 2010 at 9:56 PM #

    We saw pictures of monkeys. Was not that enough?


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