St. Petersburg!

We took a day train from Moscow to Saint Petersburg.  The countryside was stunning.  I want to live there (at least for maybe 73 days).  There were hills and valleys and meadows and lakes and little cottages and so many trees!

The lilacs are blooming in St. Petersburg.  The streets are full of people.  The buildings are antique and every one of them gorgeous.  The people are gorgeous, too.  The women in their dresses and the guys look pretty normal and well dressed, too.  Normal as in not every one of them has a mullet.  Cool.

Anyway,  I was kind of squealing a lot on the van ride to my host family.  Jess hugged me, empathizing with my uncontrollable enthusiasm.  Oh my goodness.  I'm living my dream!  This is so fantastic.

My host family is a mother and daughter: Marina and Maria.  Maria, the daughter, speaks English, and they currently have another lady living with them who is from Mexico and speaks excellent English, Russian, Italian, and Spanish of course.  Marina and Maria went to bed, but she made tea for me, and we sat in the kitchen and got to know each other.  Wow.  This is going to be so cool.

Mrs. Marina will make me breakfast at 8 am, and then I will explore the area until I meet up with the rest of our group at the nearby Metro station.

Tomorrow is exploration day, so there are bound to be pictures!  

Historical Moscow

May 22/23, 2013

Each weekday we have classes, and in the afternoon we go on excursions.  Yesterday, we went to Red Square and saw the sites to see there: St. Basil’s Cathedral, ГУМ (GUM), and the Kremlin.  Today we went back to Red Square and toured the Historical Museum.  Later, we went to the circus, which was absolutely delightful.

 GUM, the "state department store" is an absolutely gorgeous shopping mall commissioned by Catherine the Great.

 St. Basil's Cathedral was built during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, who had just defeated the Kazakhs and had this cathedral built in celebration.  It's absolutely beautiful.  It seems that Ivan agreed, because he had the architect blinded so that he would never make anything so beautiful anywhere else.  Nice.

Unfortunately none of my pictures from the circus turned out well, but nothing compares to the sight to which we came "home."  The fog settled so beautifully, and the building is lit so magnificently.   

Good night from Moscow!

My first Russian meal

Potato fries with meatballs, bread and tea.  The meatballs were super salty and garlic-y but delicious.  This costed around 110 rubles or about $3.50.  

In the city

May 20/21, 2013

New York City

So, with the curiosities of travelling, only half of May 20^th occurred for me.  David, Stepan, and I saw a smidgeon of New York.  We went to the Cake Boss Café and had coffee and cupcakes.  

After much effort, we got to JFK.  The bus there was kind of messy: we had to transfer to different buses and the drivers were grumpy about it.  But I did enjoy seeing things.  It made me excited for city life.  We met up with Найда at JFK and she, Stepan, and I played a few games of Hearts whilst bantering in the crude manner of college students before boarding our plane, which took off around 2:00 pm.   

The flight wasn’t too bad.  I slept a little bit, but ended up watching two films: Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest,” and “Hitchcock,” a film about Alfred Hitchcock.  It was divine.  I actually nearly cried watching “Hitchcock”.  Anthony Hopkins acted the part phenomenally, as did the lady who played Alma Hitchcock. Hopkins, especially, became his character.  The screenwriting was witty and captured the spirit of this beloved film director quite well. It was a moving film.

When we got off of the plane, it was 7:45 am in Moscow, which means we just skipped night time all together.   We had to wait quite a long time before we could leave by bus because we had to wait for the arrival of Shane and Dr. Pogacar.  Now we just need David and Jess to arrive, and we shall be a happy party. 

It took probably over an hour to get from the airport to the university.  It was an incredible little bus trip, though.  Moscow is so vast and varies so widely.  Some areas seem old, dilapidated and polluted.   Others seem new, enormous and futuristic.  

Here at the university, everything is just old.  I feel as if I jumped back a century here.  There are huge ballrooms with columns and paintings and statues of soviet leaders.  There are kiosks in the corners and in the halls.  The elevators are spooky and precarious-seeming, but I enjoy every bit of it. 

My room is a sanctuary.  The floor is made of raw wood laid out in chevron style.  There is a window with a straight dandelion-colored curtain and a sill big enough to sit in and watch the outside world romantically. I have little shkoffs (bookshelves/closets) and an old TV that plays cable stations.  It makes fun background noise.  There are two wooden chairs, a desk, and a lamp that inspires me to write 50s crime novels.  Everything is perfect.  For a bed, I have a sort of foam couch.  If I’d let myself, I’d probably sleep for hours, but I have to battle Jet Lag, and giving in to slumber and the forgotten night will not help.

So, here I sit with my sparkling mineral water ready for the group to come together.  I have some things I need: toiletries, really.  The toilet room (outside of my room and my currently non-existent neighbors’ room) did not come with toilet paper, so the luxury of using the bathroom is postponed until paper stuffs can be located, which is easier said than done.

Moscow State University is a wonder of the Communist era, and, in all its glory, this campus is extraordinarily intimidating to me right now.  I don’t understand how it works.  This dorm that I am in is super complicated.  It has 21 floors and myriad hallways and staircases that go around in mazes.  I haven’t even a clue how to find other buildings and stores.  There are swarms of people everywhere, too.  They all speak Russian.  I feel terribly inadequate in that regard.

I can’t say that I am scared.  I am intrigued and I am at peace, but I am in my room.  Some guys laughed at me earlier because I did not understand what they said.  The one guy said to the other, “She’s one that has terrible Russian.”  I confirmed his statement, in Russian, but they shook their heads and laughed.  After successfully purchasing water with 80 rubles, separated from my friends, I got lost in the elevators.  Yes, here even the elevators are fit for a labyrinth.  There are eight elevators on this sector of the building: two sets of four.  I did not realize that one set operates for floors 0-9 and the other for the floors to the 2 and 10-21.  After riding the latter elevators in a disoriented search for the elusive 7^th floor, I realized that I simply had the wrong group of elevators.  I was given funny looks, but it doesn’t matter.  I’ll be unknown here.  We leave in nine days.

On the bus...

May 19, 2013

            We stopped in Pittsburgh for two hours and decided to explore a little.  It was a delightful stretch of the legs.  We walked down Penn Ave., and saw a bunch of cool stores: places I would love to visit on a weekday that they’re open.  Maybe someday I can bike around all of these beautiful cities and take in the sites.  Mmmm.  Delicious culture.

            We ate at a seafood place.  It wasn’t very impressive at all, but the atmosphere was fantastic, and I enjoyed the time passed there anyway.  I delight in a good city street with weather beaten signs and unknown people.  The amount of potential discovery is mouth watering.  Oh, I am ecstatic!

            Pittsburgh was a sufficient mini-adventure.  Tomorrow morning (a few hours away) I get to finally see the beautiful cities of Philadelphia and New York, granted, it will just be a glimpse.  But it’s fine.  I’ll be in Moscow soon.  A whole new world will open up, and I will jump in. 

            These are dreams coming true.  I could cry.

Pittsburgh, PA

Off Adventuring...

Tomorrow marks the start of a new adventure!  I won't promise thorough nor frequent accounts on this blog, but there will be videos! (I'll post links later.)

Here's the general itinerary:

May 19: Join my friends on a bus in Columbus to NYC
May 20: Fly to Moscow, stay in dorms at Moscow State University
June 1-29: Train to St. Petersburg, stay in host homes and study at St. Petersburg University
July 1: Leave my group and fly to Kyiv, Ukraine.
July 2-17: Unplanned excursions throughout Ukraine. (Visiting of friends in Vinnitsa and Uzhgorod for sure.)
July 18: Return to my normal, casual, English-speaking lifestyle.

My fellow adventurers are Renée (Найда), Stephan (Степан), David, Shane,  Jess, and our BGSU Russian professor, Dr. Pogacar.

Good golly, I'm excited.