Saturday

Patrick sent me a comment which I think will serve as an excellent introduction. It goes something like this:

'I like the tone of your blog. Loyal to the benefits you're getting from the Program, but tired, pessimistic and beaten-down at the same time. Apparently the assimilation into Russian culture comes quickly.'

Now, I feel that the Russians and I have agreed on most of this for a while, except that usually I'm not that tired.

How tired?

I went to bed at 11:30 last night, with the idea that I would wake up at 6:30 (7 hours of sleep, right? Pretty good.) and go to that Russian-variant renaissance fair. At 6:30, I had precisely enough energy to turn off my alarm before I went to sleep for another, mmm, five hours. I'll probably regret it later, but damned if I could muster the energy to go to that thing.


Anyway, instead I decided to go for a walk around the city. Apparently my sense of direction is worse than I thought; I took a slightly more scenic route from the apartment and ended up at the Summer Garden instead of Nevsky prospekt. I made my way to Dom Knigi (Home of the Book), which is a very overpriced bookstore with a decent selection of English-language materials, a great selection of postcards, and a non-trivial amount of Soviet-style posters and placards (I got one picture of some of these, but an employee immediately came and told me to knock it off--politely). I also went to Kazan Cathedral, which is beautiful in a neoclassical kind of way, and also requests that you do not take pictures inside.

Oh, by the way, the Summer Garden contains what may be my favorite piece of sculpture ever, which is a statue of Saturn eating one of his children. Who knew?

And then more walking to get home. Turns out St. Petersburg is actually quite nice, if the weather cooperates. Also, it helps to get away from Nevsky. Fewer gaudy signs, more parks and monuments.

Later, I had a good laugh with the ladies at the grocery store deli across the street over how terrible my Russian was.

Eh heh.

Tomorrow: Peterhof, a slim chance that I'll attend a bus tour of St. Petersburg, and the probability that I'll actually start doing my homework, maybe.

Which reminds me: on Fridays we have a gathering for various English-speaking purposes. As it turns out, these purposes involve a certain number of announcements they absolutely want us to understand, and gaining feedback about the program. This, as it turned out, primarily involved ragging on the grammar teacher, who is also the only one of our teachers who doesn't speak English. I assume that's directly related to the kind of vocabulary she uses--that is, vocabulary we have no chance of knowing. She does things like write up case names in Russian, and abbreviate them. What I don't understand, though, is why she was teaching us that adjectives agree with nouns in number, gender, and case. I learned that so long ago, as far as it relates to Russian, all I remember is knowing it. (I kind of remember learning it for Latin--about, oh, nine years ago).

That said, the classes are otherwise outstanding. All of the teachers are very intelligible, and they work together so that we discuss similar things and therefore use similar vocabulary in every class. Hopefully that means I'll actually improve a lot.

Ok. I think that's all for now.