Intro to St. Petersburg, pt I

Enough said about travel, I hope? We arrived in St. Petersburg on Saturday at about 1:20 pm local time—that is to say, 5:20 am where it counts. And sleep on planes, I couldn’t help but notice, does not count.

There’s a Russian-only policy on the program, which is to say that if we insist on speaking English we’re to keep it to or, occasionally, amongst ourselves. This went into effect immediately. While I approve of this policy, it’s more of an annoyance than anything when you’re eight hours jet-lagged. And, also, there are some things you just want to be told how to do in English—like how to make an international phone card with a Russian calling card on a phone you’ve just been given. Seriously. That one took me about an hour and a half and some help from someone who had already been to Russia a few times. Anyway, that kept me from going to sleep immediately. I had some difficulty explaining to my mother that yes, I had arrived safe but, no, I didn’t want to talk; I hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours.

I did eventually call her back; it just took until I had my brain working again (going on thirty hours without sleep—go figure). I went to bed at about midnight, when it was about as bright as Cincinnati would be at, say, 8:00 pm, and woke up briefly at four in the morning, when it was about as bright as Cincinnati would be at, say, 5:30 am. That’s pretty cool.

Orientation (Sunday) took about three hours, and was of course in Russian, with the result that I probably got about 80% of the beginning and about 20% of the end. Naturally, we all nodded our heads and claimed that we understood everything the whole way through, even though they said they’d repeat in English if they had to. There was a lot of information in that, but I think the most important things were: always carry your passport (and registration, and migration card), and: if you need help, don’t ask the police. Then we had lunch, and went to meet our families.