Novgorod, Hockey Game, Teaching English, and Homestay

Hello All:
I apologize for the delay in getting this written but I have been having major issues with my internet but I am writing this now. It may be a bit long as a lot of things have happened since I last wrote.

First, Novgorod:
One of the oldest cities in Russia is Veliky Novgorod, about 3.5 hours by bus from good old Saint Petersburg. It is what they call a small town since a lot of the people in Russia live in large cities rather than towns or villages. However, it has a population of over 200,000 people so being from a small town, I call that a fairly large city. Anyhow, we got to visit the Novgorod Kremlin (not the one in Moscow, which by the way we are going to see next weekend), which is home to St. Sophia's Cathedral, the oldest church still used as a church in Russia. I forget how old the church is but I know that the city itself celebrated its 1052nd birthday this year. I bought some nice souvenirs from there to take home with me. We also got to visit the Museum of Wooden Architecture, but we only got to be there for about an hour. It was super awesome there though. It reminded me of those field trips you used to go on in like 4th grade, that showed how people used to live a couple centuries ago, but in this case, it was more like how peasants lived about a 1000 years ago and in Russia, so it was just that much cooler. It was really awesome and I am going back to Novgorod on our week long break after Moscow with a friend where I plan to go back to those places and view a few other places there. Unfortunately, first time around I forgot to bring my camera into the Kremlin so I wasn't able to get many pictures, but I will post a few on here. Overall, Novgorod was awesome though and I can't wait to go back in a couple weeks.

 St. Sophia's Cathedral

The Museum of Wooden Architecture Main Building

Last weekend, we got to go to a hockey game which was an also quite the experience. We saw СКА (the good guy) play Трактор (from Chelyabinsk, somewhere in the Ural Mountains). It was a super cool stadium and we won 3-1, so it was a really good game and I bought a scarf there. I got to learn all sorts of cheers in Russian and I learned the Russian word for puck (шайбу). However, as I have still not skated since I have been in Russia (about 6 weeks now :(), it made me want to get on the ice worse than ever. But I plan on going this Sunday, even if it is just on a public session for an hour.

 The Ice Palace, home of СКА hockey team

In addition, to fill up some of my time here in SPb, I figured I would volunteer because it would sound fun and look good on an application, especially to the Peace Corps, a bunch of the students are volunteering at a foreign language school here. They are always very grateful to have native speakers of English come and just converse with the students and help out with the grammar exercises. It is a lot of fun, they enjoy having us, and since I don't know the first thing about English grammar it is cool to sit in on a class and learn a bit about the language that I don't even think about speaking in everyday life. I think I am going to go there Tuesdays and Thursdays for sure as well as possibly Mondays, but I haven't decided yet.

Last but not least, I moved into my homestay last weekend. It is about a half hour to walk to class every morning so it isn't that far and it is super awesome. I live with a roommate, from Wisconsin and in the same program as me. My host mom's name is Margarita and her son is named Maksim. They are super nice and while they do speak a little English, I am doing my best to communicate with them in Russian, and i hope it is helping me learn. Additionally, I live on the 12th floor of an apartment building, and directly out of my room is a balcony that overlooks the city so it is quite awesome. Also, she makes delicious Russian food. Anyway, here are some pictures of the view from the apartment.

 The view from the balcony

View in the other direction from our balcony

I did go to the ballet the other night to see Swan Lake but since I haven't uploaded the pictures so I will tell you about that in the next entry, which I will hopefully write later this weekend and I will tell you about Pavlovsk, which is where we are going tomorrow.  Пока!

здраствуйте!

Hello again all:

So I will do a little updating here in this post but mostly I will just tell all those willing to read about a few of the little odds and ends about Russian everyday life that makes it unique to the life I know back home.

Updates: Saturday we went on an utterly depressing tour about the Siege of Leningrad by the Nazis in WWII, or what they call here the Great Patriotic War. We saw the cemetery devoted exclusively to those killed in the famine that existed in Leningrad during WWII. It was a very nice place and was all decorated with flowers since the anniversary of the beginning of the Siege was this past week. This place is only about a half hour walk from our dorm so I went back on Saturday evening after it got dark.

Here is a picture of one of the decorated graves:

And after visited this, we also went to the Memorial devoted in Southern SPb to the 900 Siege and saw what was more of the historical aspect and a tribute to it. It was very cool, I once again will direct you to my Facebook album for pictures.

That night, as I said, I tried to go back to visit the cemetery to see what it is like at night with a friend but they closed at 8 and since there isn't a gate to the entrance, there were people in uniform guarding it. If there is one thing I have learned about Russia, it is to avoid people in uniform at all costs. I have been told that if there is a problem to go to the nearest store and talk to the owner rather than trying to find the police. So instead of risking potential detainment, we just walked back instead. But we walked back through a trailed forest, in the middle of the city, kind of like Central Park, but with a lot less people. It was quite a neat experience and we could still see because it was or was very close to a full moon.

I also started my electives this past week, which are taught in English by Russians. Since they are obviously more comfortable with Russian, being natives and all, however, the writing they did was mostly in Russian, but it is not that bad. Anyhow, I am taking 19th Century Russian Literature so we get to read excerpts or pieces from famous authors such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Pushkin to name a few. I am not huge into lit, but this class is going to be awesome. The other two electives I am taking are both taught by the same professor. One is Russian History: Kievan Rus to the Revolution and the other is also a Poli Sci class and is clearly going to be my favorite class: Contemporary Russian Life.

Differences Between Russia and America:
1. Paying for bags in Grocery Stores
2. Buying Water (probably wouldn't have to but the water here is very bad and you can get really sick from drinking it, even natives don't drink it, so everyone lives off bottled water)
3. Temperature (As of right now, there is not a huge temperature difference but we will see when it comes to November and the days get really short)
4. Language (obviously, but unlike other places in Europe, you have to do a lot more searching to find someone who even speaks passable English. The ones that do know English however get annoyed when you try to speak to them in Russian because they know that you are struggling)
5. Exercise. I am not sure how every Russian is skinny but I hardly ever see Russians out running.
6. Fashion. While Russia is a significantly poorer country than the US, Russians dress to kill and are probably better dressed than Americans.
7. Shopping. There are a couple of points to this. Food is very cheap here compared to in America, and Russians go shopping every few days to buy food rather than maybe once a week but there are универсамы (supermarkets) on just about every corner so they are very accessible. Clothes, on the other hand, are significantly more expensive here so I will not be bringing home any new clothes but hopefully some yummy food for everyone to try. :)
8. Documentation. Everyone is required to carry documentation on them at all times if out in public. Police officers can stop anyone at random and ask to see documents to prove who they are and that they are here legally. Failure to produce documents results in detainment until someone can prove who you are. Our documentation includes a copy of our passport, our migration cards and a letter from the university proving that we are allowed to be here. We also need to carry around our city registration as part of our documentation. On top of that, we usually need to have our student cards, room keys, and the magnetic card that lets us into the dorm. It gets to be quite a lot.

I can't think of any differences at the moment but I know I have forgotten several so in future posts I will be sure to list them as I think of them.

I believe that is all for now. До свидания!

So Much Beautiful Architecture!

So since I last posted, I have gotten to see so much more around St. Petersburg. We have been on a boat ride around the rivers of St. Petersburg. They call St. Petersburg the Venice of the North because it was built on all sorts of rivers and islands. While on our boat tour, we saw all sorts of palaces (it seems like there is one on every block in SPb) and the coolest architecture in these palaces. As I'm sure if you are reading this, you have a Facebook, you can look on there to see my pictures. I will post some of my favorites on here as we go though. We also got to see the Hermitage for the first (and definitely not the last) time last week. As one of both the biggest and most visited museums in the world, they have some fascinating exhibits and there are over 20 km of space to walk through and see the exhibits. Most of it was art, which doesn't interest me that much, but the architecture, is amazing. The Winter Palace, the main palace of the Tsars, is the entrance to the Hermitage and the architecture in there is phenomenal and it appears to be all gilded, crystal, or other flashy things to show off wealth. And the Winter Palace is one of only seven buildings that make up the Hermitage. Unfortunately, since you have to pay 200 rubles (about $7) to take pictures in the Hermitage, I did not take pictures this time but will some time in the next couple months on one of my trips back. I will post here the picture of us outside of the Winter Palace, in and of itself spectacular.

And here is a better overall glimpse of the Winter Palace, but without the people:

The other big thing we did was going to Peterhof, the summer palace of Peter the Great. The big thing there are the fountains. I believe the guide we had, said there are a total of 150 fountains, including trick fountains (that you might not know exist until you are drenched by them), gilded fountains, a pyramid shaped fountain, designed by Peter the Great himself, and one to represent the sun. All in all very cool. However since I'm not sure if there is a maximum amount of data I can put in one entry, I won't put the pictures on here but will instead refer you to Facebook.

Electives start this week as well and meet only for an hour and a half once a week. But I am excited because I got into all the classes I wanted, which are: 19th Century Russian Lit, Contemporary Russian Life, and Kievan Rus to the Revolution History. I am very excited for those classes to start as well. Not too much else other than that that I can think of, but I will be sure to keep you posted!