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.
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!
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