Arrividerci, Roma (Part III)

The next day I went throught some more of the city, mainly more parks on the west side of the center, before ending up at St. Peter's again. While I was standing around, a girl came up to me and asked if I went to Stony Brook, indicating my bag. I said yes; we chatted for about 2 seconds (she was from East Islip, and asked where I was from) before she darted off. Hm. Even so, it was the most I'd heard in native English in weeks. I wanted to see if the cupola at St. Peter's was open today, as the notice that I'd seen the previous time I had been there implied that the closing was only that one day (of course). It was, so up I went - 550 stairs (or so) each way. What a terrific view!

Subsequently I was to meet Lidia and have dinner with her family - while I waited to meet her, I saw another student of the "keep going until you hit the car in front/behind you" school of parallel parking. As her mom drove us, we stopped occasionally to see views of the city. Lidia showed me around her apartment a bit; there was a Ukranian woman staying with them for the time being. We had some pizza and spaghetti (and bread), a combination which Lidia said was not usual for them to eat, but so that I could have some of each. Her sister joined us; Lidia said she had made the sauce. We talked some more about language (she speaks nine), and they drove me back to the hotel; on the way we saw some more sights, including the Circus Maximus, now illuminated, and much to my surprise the lights were all different colors. She and I agreed to meet for lunch the next day, and I bid farewell to her mother and sister.

By now I'd seen most of what I wanted in the center, so I bought a day-ticket for the metro and decided to just go around; my first destination was St. Paul's cathedral. This was my first excursion on the "B" line of the metro, and it was quite a contrast to the clean, modern "A" line (which was reminiscent of Prague) - the wagons were old and almost completely covered with graffiti. St. Paul's cathedral was also amazing. Subsequently I stopped at the adjacent "Piramide" station, where there was indeed a pyramid. I looked around there for a few minutes before continuing on and meeting Lidia. We got some pizza and walked to Piazza del Popolo and chatted while we ate there, before heading back for some ice cream and looking in vain for somewhere to sit as my two cups of ice cream begain to melt. Afterwards we headed back to the metro and bid each other farewell; I walked around a little longer before taking the train to the airport, which was a nice ride at sunset, with a rainbow in the distance.

The flight was fairly uncomfortable; fortunately it was only little more than an hour. It was an MD-80 with three seats in each row, and not enough room in the overhead bin to fit my backpack. Coincidentally, the Alitalia inflight magazine also featured St. Petersburg as the cover story.

Oh, and in addition to popped collars, I hate sweaters tied around people's necks.

More on Petersburg (and economics, incidentally)

So, while in Petersburg, after my trip to Pavlovsk, I met up with Polly Gannon at Cafe Zoom (where else?). We chatted for a while, obviously about my travels, and also her imminent plans to visit Helsinki, at whicih I mentioned the group on the train from Arkhangelsk. I also talked about how I watched the news much more while I was away in Murmansk, and said I'd also tried to watch it in Russian a bit, and remarked about some of the differences in coverage, for example about a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (group including Russia, China, and several other former Soviet bloc countries) meeting in Bishkek - the western news mentioned some joint military exercises, whereas, as far as I could tell, the Russian news didn't. I also talked about how nice it had been to be divorced from all the trivialities of the west that pollute the news, which had resurfaced again when watching, say CNN.



One thing that was especially nice to be away from was all the market crap. I was in Murmansk just as the "US mortgage crisis" began tumbling the markets around the world. I was bemused at all the finger pointing, and all-around pompous crap, with analysts going on about this and that. All of this хрен has always annoyed me, with rich executives suffering no fallout for any bad decisions, even when they're quite evident to everyone else who doesn't have a golden parachute - the constant sacrifice of long-term opportunities in favor of short-term gains that the market loves, followed by inevitable pain later on is something that constantly repeats itself. Layoffs of thousands solely to boost the stock price for a while, etc. I raised the example of Daimler-Chrysler - when they merged, there were serious questions raised, but hey, who cares, parties were thrown, the execs made truckloads of cash, and certainly they are not paying for the fallout. They're almost always not only insulated from these bad decisions, but practically rewarded for them. It seems to me like just a constant plundering, where people cash in on these short-term gains, and the unlucky end up holding the bag when it all collapses. Then the cycle begins again with something else.



Honestly, I saw this housing bubble coming a mile away; once I heard about home prices leveling off (and some other things), I figured it was all going to come crashing down, since people were buying houses they couldn't afford, waiting for the value to go up so they could sell it and make a profit. And somehow this constituted an economy. Banks were giving absurd mortgages to people with bad credit, no assets, little income, etc, and what do you know, housing prices didn't go up forever, and then things all went to hell, and now everyone's looking for someone to blame. Let's see, I, a simple student with little to no interest or training in economics, saw this coming a mile away from scattered bits of news in passing, as did many others - I read in the Times about an investor who somehow bet/hedged/however that works much of his company on this happening, and now is raking in the dough even as everyone else tries to figure out how this could have happened and who's to blame. How indeed. Where was all the money being made actually coming from? Thin air? Eventually you were going to have people buying houses and not being able to sell them at a profit - obviously that couldn't go on forever (there's a skit on the Simpson's with Disco Stu showing a graph of disco investing that ends at the 1970s, and he says, "if these trends continue...hey!"). But the problem was that the houses were now being sold to people who couldn't afford to keep them, and kaboom. The collapse came from zeal, and not ensuring that people could actually afford what they were getting in to. But of course in the US, nay-sayers are unpatriotic/terrorists/pessimists/hurting America/etc and just otherwise personae non-grata (help me out with the latin?). It was all like the internet bubble; it was all based on thin-air economics, and sure enough, it eventually dried up. It's like a pyramid scheme on a giant scale, and eventually you run out of new people for the bottom and it all comes crashing down. I wonder about Google as well, with its sky-high stock price, seemingly based solely on hype. Who knows.



Anyway, afterwards I met up with Lena, one of Katya's friends from the philological faculty, and we met at some Indian-esque with someone named Oleg who sells shoes, drives a black Land Rover, and flies to Moscow from time to time. Вот. He ordered us a bunch of things, most of which I tried and ate.



The next day, I met up with Julia Vorobiova (one of the staff, who took care of lots of stuff) at Ням Ням, the bliny place next to the dorms. We chatted about things, mostly languages, and then said our farewells, and later on that evening did I meet up with Katya and Tanya, again at Cafe Zoom, then went to Fidel and said our покаs. Until, hopefully, next year!

By the way, Part 2

Some other things we did through the program that I forgot:

- Tour of some of the metro stops; we were able to take pictures, which is usually not allowed for some reason (which the guide couldn’t explain; in Moscow you can)

- Blues concert on a boat trip through the Neva

Other random things:

I also saw the white Lexus with expired New York license plates again, which I’d seen last year. In addition there were some Massachusetts plates hanging around together. Weird.

One time I was walking in the rain, and two dogs started following me for a while, with one of them hanging out under my umbrella, until I got to the bus stop.

Speaking of umbrellas, I hear the song (now it’s raining more than ever, …) or one of its apparently innumerable derivatives far too often.

The poplar pollen has started flying through the streets again now that the rain has stopped and the weather has gotten warmer.

The times, they are a changing:

Most of our group in on facebook, and we befriended each other before the trip. When we met in person, many of us already recognized each other.

Among the souvenirs I’ve seen are magnets which represent a cameraphone taking a picture of some sort of monument (some kind of monument which would normally be the magnet)

I sometimes see jet skis cruising in the canals

There are a lot of damn car alarms near where I live, and the same one is almost always going off.

всё

Между прочим (By the way)

Other happenings (now that I've given up on writing every day):

- One of the students fell ill with GI problems and had to fly home about 3 weeks ago; they think it might collitis, in combination with / brought on by / exacerbated by a bacterial infection (I havent heard anything more definite since she went home)

Some other interesting excursions:
- a Russian prison
- a "center of experimental fine arts", ie. pretty much a bunch of artists live here
- Rolling Stones concert - this was awesome, they had a giant stage in the middle of the palace square (which they built in a week), flanked by the Hermitage and Alexander column; unreal. (Side note: the director of the Hermitage really hates these things as it rattles all the paintings; during a previous concert of some sort one even fell!). Pictures and videos will help convey how cool it was
- had a boat trip on the river to see the bridges open in the middle of the night
- Tsarskoye Celo, another place that I'd gone last year but was still nice to see again and remember

And soon (8/5) we'll be leaving on a weeklong cruise to Petrozadovsk a bit further north (as well as a bunch of islands en route there and back).

7/20/07 - Who Watches the Watchers?

Today was the closing of the New York Institute, its three weeks gone by as though they were days. Unfortunately the participants of our program could only take one seminar (out of the four) and were also unable to participate in most of the other offerings (lectures, films, discussion groups) but many of us met new people all the same, in our classes, and just in and around the university. I ended up hanging out with the group of Stony Brook study abroad students and some Croatian students fairly often, and it was cool to hang out with all the students and teachers together one last time during the closing ceremonies/party.

That night, on the way home (this all lasted until the late night), I had an encounter with the police. A police car pulled up next to me from behind and three policemen got out (Russian side note: although 90% of the time, the verbs of motion are incredibly annoying, in situations where you really do want to be specific, their annoying precision in everyday situations comes in handy, that is: Когда я шел домой, машина милиции подъехала ко мне, и три человека вышли). I still am pretty bad at understanding spoken Russian (though better), so I asked if they wanted to see my documents, which they confirmed. But then they said they were going to search me for drugs. So one was still looking through my passport, another through my wallet, and the third was frisking me, searching my pockets and backpack. I didn't think (or really know how to ask for) their badge numbers or anything like that, plus it was fairly hard to see and I was more-or-less just overwhelmed because they were all going through various things and I was trying to keep track of everything. I was mainly worried about my passport, wallet, and camera, and once they finished, they quickly left in the car and drove away. I thought I had everything, so I (stupidly) didn't make a note of the license plate (which I later realized is only four digits) but quickly after they left, I realized that my cell phone was no longer with me.

I was livid. I felt extremely angry, and betrayed. I swore to myself, cursing them, and this country (the irony of the previous post on politics is not lost on me, but reality tends to interfere with idealism). I decided at that point that I wasn't going to follow through with my plans after the program but rather would just go straight home after it and never come back to this wretched place. I asked, "Why am I here? Why am I here, trying to study their language and culture? So they can rob me?" and further swore to myself all the way home. The next day I was not quite so angry, and was not so sure I was really going to just call off all of my subsequent travels, and of course by now it's all fine. I'm not angry about the money (as should be clear already) and in fact would rather they'd have taken twice the phone's value in cash, because cash has no other value, but losing the phone was a huge inconvenience (though honestly I figured when I left there was about a 50/50 chance that the phone wouldn't be coming back with me). I only today (7/31) have a functional phone (barely: it's terribly designed, with every action requiring the traversal of seemingly a dozen menus, including simply reading or sending a message; it's really awful) and SIM-card again, because getting a new card with the same number was also a pain. I lost a bunch of numbers I had in it, e.g. that I'd just gotten that day, as well as a few others who I'd met in Russia, but all the same, it was a colossal nuisance. But more than that, it's just the fact that it hapened. Up until then, nothing bad had happened (more or less) but this put me back into touch with that inconvenience of reality. It also feels frustrating and helpless at times to still be so bad at communicating in this language.

Still, on the bright side, the phone was the least important of the things that could have been taken, and at least it taught me this lesson of caution here, while I still have the staff to help me (e.g. procure the new SIM card) rather than later on, when I'll be more-or-less completely on my own. Although you can hear stories about the rampant corruption, it really doesn't hit home until you actually have something happen to you. And then who do you turn to if the police itself is so corrupt? On that note, I also learned some new words and sayings, e.g. "Менты - козлы" (literally: cops are goats, but "goat" is slang for asshole.)

4th of July

Today was of course, Independence Day. In the evening we had a classy little celebration as we took a small cruise on the canals/rivers where we celebrated with champagne and such. This contrasts with last year, when we celebrated by eating at Subway. This is now the second 4th of July in a row that I've celebrated here, and it is sort of funny to think that I'm celebrating it here in this country, with which we were such bitter enemies not that long ago.

Ballet (7/3) and Opera (7/16)

Up until this trip, I hadn't ever been to any kind of ballet or opera, but I've had the opportunity to do so as part of this trip.

On 7/3 I saw a ballet at the Alexandrinsky Theater, a "modern" ballet based on Chekhov's The Seagull, which I haven't read, and so my understanding was fairly limited, though I got the gist. There was one part where everyone was break dancing to a hip-hop beat--that was fairly entertaining to watch, as it seemed fairly incongruous. For the most part I enjoyed it, but certainly I can live without it.

On 7/16 I saw La Traviata at the Mariinsky. The theater was certainly amazing, and I enjoyed the show, but to the same extent that I did the ballet. It was nice, but I can live without it. It was an amusing situation, that the performers are of course singing in one language I don't understand (Italian) while it is translated into another language I marginally understand (Russian). But I got the gist: Love and Death. Of course, that's simply the basis of pretty much any such drama.

It's hard to say which I liked more; both the ballet and the opera have a different appeal. The ballet is much simpler and concentrated on gracefulness, whereas the opera is a fairly rich, majestic production. I guess it's somewhat similar to the difference between a silent film and one with sound, in that you need to squeeze every bit of symbolism and artistry out of the former, since you don't have the "crutch" of dialog.

Вот.

Нити (threads)

The other day we visited St. Isaac's Cathedral, which has a majestic collonade overlooking the entire city, offering a fantastic view of the entire skyline (we also visited the interior of the cathedral, which is equally incredible). Anyway, while walking around up on the collonade, the attendant (a guide/guard, who I suppose was there to make sure people who were taking pictures had an appropriate ticket, and to offer help / information to visitors), began chatting with me, asking me where I was from, what I studied, and so forth. He seemed somewhere between 50 or 60, and of Eastern descent (in that I mean: remember that Russia spans all of Asia as well). As we concluded he offered to sell me some playing cards as a souvenir, but I said "no thanks" and continued to amble around.

The previous day at the university, I was chatting with another member of the program. She was asking me about what I was studying back home, and so I had mentioned that I had just finished my degree in computer science / applied math. Naturally, she asked me what I was going to do upon returning home, and I told her the whole story about Microsoft, Applied Visions, and so forth. We didn't get to finish, because we needed to go to a lecture or something of the sort.

I continued to walk around the collonade, and happened to meet up with her again while there. I continued our conversation from yesterday, and asked her of her plans and such. She hadn't been able to make it to the orientation in Manhattan because she was taking her doctoral exams, so I asked her how that went, and was surprised when she said she hadn't passed them. She said she didn't think she would continue and try again with it, but wasn't sure what she wanted to do (she was studying economics). She said although she could find a good job in statistics or something of the like, she didn't know if she really wanted to, but said at this point it was really too hard to change her mind. I disagreed, saying that although it may be harder, it only gets harder still with the passing of time.

At this point, the attendant, who had been walking around, ended up coming by and began chatting with us some more. We learned that he had studied English for 5 years, and German for 12, but had never traveled anywhere to use either. He was working at St. Isaac's for the summer, but come September he would look for a new job, as he had been a coal miner up until this point. I regretted not buying his playing cards.

As I sat in the hotel in New York, debating what to do about Microsoft's offer, the main issue that drove my decision was the flexibility afforded by continuing to work close to home, such that if I decided to change my mind and profession, it was a simple matter of giving notice and saying my goodbyes, without the minor inconvenience of moving back across the country. The day of the flight I called Applied Visions from the hotel, and said I was in: I'm going to stay.

While at the airport, I called Microsoft, with my whole batch of scribbled notes outlining why I had decided as I did. A very effective recruiter, she had my head spinning as she effectively discussed and tried to assuage each of my objections. Of my newfound interest in the State Department: she said that as an international company, Microsoft could offer similar opportunities to travel. Of moving: I said that moving across the country was a somewhat different animal than a closer state. She parried by saying she'd try to set up something in Massachusetts and that we'd talk when I was settled here. Mentioning that I'd agreed to work for Applied Visions had slipped my mind; I was so mixed up at that point she could have had me believing my own mother was a turnip. So we agreed to be in touch.

What ties all this together are the contrasts of choices. I had a difficult time deciding what to do about Microsoft. A few years ago I would certainly have labeled it my dream job. But now I'm not sure what to do: keep programming? Pursue psychology? Foreign service? Math teacher (hence the applied math degree)? Police officer? All of these are opportunities that are reasonably available for me to pursue.

So choosing was difficult, but is it that difficult about choosing among a half dozen paths just out of college, compared to pursuing a Ph.D in a field, but not succeeding, and then deciding maybe you don't want to continue? And what is difficult about either of those situations when one is a coal miner, having studied languages for many years with little opportunity to really use them, when all of us here have a golden ticket to use our (widely varying) Russian skills for which I've paid in the neighborhood of, oh, nothing at all.

I feel spoiled. Either alternative is a relative luxury, and yet how can it be any less difficult than anything else? Even this coal miner's life is a relative luxury compared to those whose lives have been destroyed in New Orleans where we tried to help by a miniscule amount (or the Kansas tornado, the 2004 tsunami, the Iraq war, or any of the other innumerable catastrophes). It's all relative. Everyone just wants a satisfying life: for the less well-off, they might aspire to that which I have already achieved / been given, and would find satisfaction in accomplishing this. But what does that mean for me? That I should just be satisfied? Regret is just as strong as any other emotion, isn't it? I think it comes back to Maslow's hierarchy, wherein you can't satisfy higher needs (emotion, esteem, etc) until the lower ones are met (food, shelter, etc). But all the same, everyone wants to fulfill the entire pyramid. It's just that you are only looking up one level at a time.

So in the end, I finally responded to Microsoft's email. I said that I'd decided to stay on with Applied Visions for the time being, splitting my time between there and working with my psychology professor in her lab, getting experience lest I decide to pursue that direction. And if I decided I really do what to be a programmer, Microsoft will still be around (well, unless everyone keeps buying Macs). I am already having second thoughts about the decision, but I know that either alternative would have resulted in a little regret. So who knows. We'll see what happens.

Monday, 7/2 - NYI Begins Again

Today was the first day of the New York Institute program. This was the main program I attended last year, which consists of four seminars, and many lectures, discussions, and film series (this program is in English). This year we are only attending one seminar; I am taking a seminar with John Bailyn on puzzles in Russian syntax. The opening party was in the evening, and I saw many familiar faces, including Blake, a roommate from last year who's been here since February, Katya, the Stony Brook/NYI study-abroad guide, Nina Kazanina, who taught a seminar I took last year, Konstantine Klioutchkine, who taught another seminar last year, and much of the staff as well as a few familiar students, including one we had dubbed "Debra Messing" last year. They said there wasn't enough champagne for everyone but that turned out to be quite far from the truth...

Sunday, 7/1 - Peterhof Redux

Today we went to Peterhof. Having finally bought an umbrella yesterday (Saturday), the weather has since been perfect. It is a marvelous place, a giant park filled with fountains and a large palace. It was a great trip, but a little sad because it was one of our main excursions at the end of our trip last year and there were a lot of memories. I walked around a bit where we walked on the beach and in the water, and remembered Alex's shoes floating in the water like boats, as they were completely waterproof, and Alex and I skipping rocks (and he got me in the knee with one). Fumiko and Tanya wading in the water, and Fumiko finally falling and getting soaked, and Tanya continuing to facilitate this. Anna taking a dip in the fountain and then hurriedly leaving because she was worried about the would-be fine. Fortunately my new camera has a vastly improved battery life; throughout most of the day trips last year it would die about halfway through. One might guess that, having been to Peterhor last year I wouldn't take too many pictures this year, but no. I took another 100-150 or so I think.

After Peterhof we finally had the excursion from Monday that was canceled. I decided to go even though it was most of the same stuff I'd seen last year, but it ended up being worth it as we went up to Smolny Cathedral which had a nice view (though not as nice as St. Isaac's). I didn't know that the cathedral was never actually used as such; one of the builders committed suicide near the end of its construction. It's now used only as a concert hall.

First week - Saturday 6/30

For today, there was a choice between a Rock Festival (Окна Открой) and some sort of Medieval Festival in another town a few hours away. The Medieval Festival sounded interesting if only to see the town, but I really didn't want to get up early, and decided to go to the rock festival. This turned out to be more interesting that I expected, as it was interesting to see this part of Russian life and culture. After we left the rock festival (there were 5 of us) we hung out in the park and drank some champagne and such. I reawakened my ice cream gluttony, eating 7 throughout the day. Total cost: oh, about $5. We hung out near the Mosckovskiy metro station (a large monument to Lenin stands there, and there are fountains and such; it was from here that we took a van to Tsarskoe Celo last year). I also checked out the 'monument to the defenders of Leningrad' or whatever it's called, which is a large monument to the 3-year siege of Leningrad during World War II. I was happy to finally see this, as I'd merely gone past it in travels last year.

NB: the mullets are unisex, by the way

First week - Friday, 6/29

It was decided that on Fridays, in lieu of a lecture, we'd have an "airing of grievances" in English. The best part of this was as follows:

Andrew: "That first lecture, the economics one, that Nikita Maslennikov--"
Anna Maslennikova: "Yes, he is my husband"
Andrew: "--was absolutely great, I enjoyed it a lot!"

This was of course the lecture that I mentioned from Monday which no one really understood very well. After the laughter died down we more seriously discussed the difficulties including grammar, which evidently was a difficulty for all the groups.

After the meeting we had a tour around Peter and Paul Fortress, and inside the Peter and Paul Cathedral, which was nice, as it was something I didn't get to see very much (except insofar as it's a large landmark, visible from most of the city), and after the tour we went to a concert there by a male choir which I enjoyed. It was actually in a room inside the fortress wall (it was moved, to hilarious effect, at the last minute). It was packed, and as I left, they handed out these small laminated placards (the size on the order of a few postage stamps) which read "АНТРАКТ" / "ANTRAKT" in Latin and Cyrillic. I thought this was the name of the choir, until next week when we were at the theater, when I asked someone how to say "intermission," and, you guessed it, it's "antrakt" is Russian, at which point I realized that it was probably a reentrance ticket. Why they felt the need to write the Russian word in the Latin alphabet, rather than giving the English word, is beyond me.

First week - Wednesday, 6/27

Wednesday
Today we were going to watch a film with Polly Gannon, but the sound wouldn't work. Our cultural excursion of the day was to "watch"/listen to Verdi's Requiem at the philharmonic. I like Mozart's better but I nevertheless enjoyed it; it's very different to listen to music by oneself than to sit and listen to it performed). After that, I walked around a bit near the dorms where I lived last year, eating dinner at the bliny place where the same two guys still worked. It was bittersweet to see the familiar sights/people but being there just by myself.

Random note: the mullet is strangely in style here now

First week - Tuesday, 6/26

Today we started our Russian-language classes; they run from 9:30 to about 1:15 in two 1:30 sections (пары). My first class was grammar; this went well, as everything was in Russian in spite of the fact that about half the group doesn't know any grammatical terms in Russian. We spent about 10 minutes figuring out that we were talking about adjectives (the teacher doesn't speak English, but rather only Russian and German, so we had to talk around everything that was unclear). I didn't learn much grammar (I'm quite familiar with adjectives by this point) but at least it was good practice in listening and speaking. We were given a handout on participles to read for the next class, so that at least held some promise. Of course, the handout (evidently from a textbook) was only mildly useful, as the excerpt explained everything about participles (types, endings) except when to use which type, which was kind of the important part.

The second class was phonetics, which was fairly interesting. We were given a booklet of songs (Не фонетика - песня! / "Not phonics - songs!"), each of which goes over some sort of phonetic device; this one was called "Shi-Zhi-Zhi". We listened and sang it to the tune of the teacher playing the guitar. The chorus goes "A zhuzhi zhuzhat: zhu zhu zhu zhu zhu" (The beetles are buzzing: zhu zhu zhu...etc) and so on. For me though, the hardest thing is rolling the "r" in various places.

After lunch, John Bailyn gave a lecture on Russian which was fairly interesting, and went over some interesting interactions between various letters vis-a-vis softness/hardness (e.g. in English: due vs. do have soft/hard 'd' sounds), and spelling rules.

After this lecture we watched a film (introduced by Timur, who introduced many films last year), called "Man with a moviecamera" which was a silent film which was sort of about everyday life. When that finished we split off and went to various restaurants; I went with the Sbarro group, not surprisingly.

Writing the English takes enough time, so I'll just skip the Russian journal entries

First week - Monday 6/25

On Monday we took a placement exam, obviously to determine into which groups we would be divided. Last year's test was a short one, maybe an hour or so (if that), but this one was a fairly grueling 3 hours, with 130 questions, including 3 listening sections (given via short video clips). Participles (причастие) were the last things we looked at (but only briefly) in class at home, but they were the main thing I remember not knowing here; it felt like half the questions involved them. The room was also hot, so all-in-all it was quite exhausting.

After that we had lunch, which was tough because they just brough a soup, salad and main dish (no choice) and I am very picky. This it "бизнесс-ланч" ("business lunch") is offered to us every day after morning classes (пары) but I've stopped bothering and go to another cafeteria in the building.

After lunch, we had a lecture given by Nikita Maslennikov, who had given a lecture last year in English (the "cannonball" lecture, if you were there). This year he gave a lecture on economics. It was in Russian: fast, terse, Russian, with lots of economic terms. This was hopeless for me to understand (and few others had much better luck). I was already sort of worn out from the test, and this didn't help. After that we were to have an excursion around the city but that didn't play out due to rain.

We're "obliged" (recommended) to keep a Russian journal, so here is that rendition of the day's events:
Сегодня мы написали эксамен, который был очень трудный. Вообше я знал мало о причастиях. Я очень устал, но после обеда (который мне не очень понравился, потому что, я, к сожелению - разборчив), у нас была лекция на русском языке по экономике. Этого было очень трудно понимать. Я очень устал. У нас было бы эксурсия, но она не состоялась, потому что, шёл дождь.

To Russia...

It seemed that once we left the ground at Frankfurt, our group turned on the "Russian switch"; up until that point no one had really been speaking any Russian to each other but from that moment on, we were Russian-only, even among ourselves.

Saturday evening, we arrived at Pulkovo. In contrast to last year, we did indeed have a jetway, as opposed to simply stairs on the tarmac, but there were many familiarities. I missed the exhiliration that I had last year when we were approaching the airport, remarking at the incredible changes that had transpired in the last 10-20 years such that it was even possible to be in this strange land with which we had been enemies for so long. This year seemed more routine.

There was the same familiar 4-note chime followed by announcements over the PA system, but in contrast to last year, the line to customs was shorter and the weather more cool. Anna Maslennikova and Julia Vorobiova, some familiar staff from last year, met us at Pulkovo, although this time it was only in Russian. Те же люди, другой язык. My luggage fortunately made it this time, and rather than the rickety van to some archaic, beat-up dormitory, we had a large coach bus taking the group to the "Petro Sport Hotel" which was pretty luxurious by any standard. Keys were not a problem, no one was living in my spot, the bathrooms weren't repulsive, I didn't need to take dysfunctional elevators; it was all so banal in a way. We had phones this year, either from home or purchased for us, and SIM cards waiting as well so we were all able to call each other (more-or-less) as opposed to banging on iron doors, 9 floors away.

We had dinner at the hotel, and breakfast on Sunday morning (a buffet), and after that we had an orientation (in Russian) and then checked out and met our families. Mine is a single woman, on the young side of middle-aged, with a young daughter who is away for the summer in Moscow. We chatted over some wine (in Russian; she doesn't speak English anyway), and then bought some breakfast for me (cereal) and had some dinner (frozen pizza). Trying to understand all the Russian has been very difficult, as I've had very little practice and have (apparently) a small vocabulary. My room is fairly large and comfortable, having been recently remodeled. I have a sofa/bed. One point of amusement for the Russian speaking among you, is that the bathroom's toilet paper (which exists, by the way), is of the brand "Мягкий знак," the logo of which is indeed "ь".

Last year I lived on Vasilievsky Island, where the university is located, about 20 minutes by bus, the stops for which were conveniently across from the dorm and university. This year I live across the Neva on the mainland (well, actually another small island off the mainland). It's about 35 minutes on foot, as unfortunately the only bus route that goes in the right direction is about 15 minutes away from the apartment and 10 minutes away from the university, so it's not worth doing. The first week saw heavy rain, and I didn't have an umbrella, so that was unpleasant.

I go across the Lieutenant Schmidt bridge, which is still being reconstructed (there is a parallel bridge right next to it, which I think is only temporary, as they can't afford to close the bridge entirely). This is the western bridge, which has four large towers, for those went last year. At first this was really difficult since crossing the streets to reach it was treacherous as there is no traffic stop. Now it's less difficult as I can walk across the bridge that the cars are not driving over.

It's been interesting to see the results of the many constructions that were in progress last year, such as the Neva-facing facade of the Hermitage, and some roadwork on the university embankment, which now has a median which one can walk on or stop on when crossing the street.

It's been very busy, as we have Russian classes each day, plus lectures in Russian, plus other cultural programs, but I'll talk all about all that.