My Daily Routine

I've been here for over 3 months now and my daily life has definitely got to the point of becoming a routine process of teaching lessons and traveling between lessons.  Here is my typical Monday schedule:

8:30-leave the apartment. Walk 3-5 minutes to the bus stop. Take a 10-15 minute ride on a bus to the metro station. Ride the metro for 30-35 minutes. Take a tram or bus to my 10:00 lesson.

10:00-11:30-Teach a lesson (Individual student)

After Lesson: Take the bus back to the metro.  Ride to the opposite end of the city  for 30-35 minutes.  Walk to my next lesson.

1:00-2:30-Teach a lesson (2 students)

After lesson: Get back on the metro.  Try to get to my Russian lesson within 30 minutes.  usually get there right on time.

3:00-4:30: Russian lesson with my teacher

After lesson: Back to the metro.  Ride a few stops.

5:00-6:30: Teach a lesson (Individual student at his office--he's the director of a company that transports uranium)

After lesson: Race to the metro. Ride a few stops

7:00-10:00: Teach a group lesson.  My current Monday evening group has 7 students.

After lesson: Walk to the metro (7 minutes), Ride the metro towards home (~25 minutes), Take a bus from the metro station (10-12 minutes late at night), Walk home

~11:15 PM: Get home from work 

My Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving 2010:

Location: Russia
Ethnicity of restaurant: Uzbekh
Ethnicity of food ordered: Japanese
Ethnicity of person eating the food: American (last time I checked)
Ethnicity of person singing music over the speaker system of restaurant: Jamaican

Happy Thanksgiving.

Weekend in Moscow

I went to Moscow for the weekend two weeks ago. There were five of us from St. Petersburg that went and we had a great time. The train ride to Moscow takes 8 hours so almost all of the trains to Moscow leave at night and arrive early the next morning. We rode in "sleeper" cars that don't have any private cabins--just 50 or so bunk-bed style beds in the car. It's kind of a fun way to travel. On the way to Moscow, we unfortunately were assigned the beds at the end of car right next to the entrance to the toilet. This meant that people were walking by us and opening the (very loud) door all night long. The train itself was rather old as well and I barely slept at all on the way to Moscow. The train back to St. Petersburg was VERY nice but unfortunately the passenger sleeping directly below me had a massive snoring problem and once again I didn't get much sleep.

I didn't go to Red Square this time--I'd already gone there on every other previous trip to Moscow--but I did go to the very first McDonalds restaurant in Russia that opened up in 1990. At the time it was the largest in the world and apparently they served over 35,000 customers on the first day of business. If you don't believe me, just watch this video.

Here are a few other pictures:

Subway: Not always promoting a healthy diet...

I was trying to be sneaky with my camera on my Macbook while I was eating at Subway with some friends the other day. the result wasn't exactly what I was hoping for but I decided to post it anyways.

What this picture is trying to point out:

-that you can buy beer at Subway restaurants in Russia. You can also buy it at KFC. McDonalds is holding strong though and still only serves soft drinks. (If you look at the family sitting in the background you will see a single plastic cup with a brownish-looking liquid inside--that's not Ginger Ale.)

What the picture ends up pointing out:

-that Sveta always wears a bib at Subway (or that she had some hilarious split-second timing as the picture was being taken--you decide)

-that the Subway found on Nevsky Prospekt, 20 was the busiest Subway in the world for the months of May, June, July, and August. (that's what the sign behind the tipsy family is announcing)

Officially Official. I'm a PRO!

View from the 14th Floor

Sushi in St. Pete

In the last few years sushi has become a BIG DEAL in St. Pete. Every third restaurant is a sushi restaurant. That's not an exaggeration.

My history with sushi has not been a good one. I tried sushi for the first time in high school and thought it was the most repulsive thing I'd ever eaten in my life. (Keep in mind that this was before I ate "meat jello" for the first time in Russia.) When I lived in Iowa--a good seven years after my first attempt--I decided to give sushi another try. Still disgusting.

After arriving in St. Petersburg, I realized that once again I was going to have to reassess my terrible relationship with sushi. The reason why there are so many sushi restaurants here is because everybody here loves sushi. Since everybody loves sushi, that means that all of my friends here love sushi. And since all of my friends here love sushi, that means they go out to eat sushi a lot. And since they go out to eat sushi a lot, that means that I would eventually have to go along with them. I dreaded that moment.

However.

From my first bite I was hooked. I thought it was one of the best things I'd ever tasted. I was completely in shock. The day after I had my first sushi roll in St. Pete all I wanted to eat was more sushi. Thankfully, everybody here is more than happy to tag along when someone has a sushi craving.

So there you have it--after 9 years of negative feelings for sushi, we've finally been able to put the negative experiences of the past behind us.

Here are a few pics from a "mass sushi outing" from a couple weeks ago:

Finally

After 50 years of waiting, my computer is finally connected to the internet in my apartment. This means more blog entries! and pictures too! But for now, I'm tired. Good night.

Obligatory "Sorry it's been a long time since I last wrote" post

Reason #238 for why there have been no pictures yet: I may or may not have left my camera at someone's apartment last week. (Yet another) grand reunion is expected in the near future. And then pictures will be posted. Really.

I've completed my certification course and Saturday was my first official day as an English teacher. Tomorrow evening I start with my first group--I'll be teaching them twice a week for the next two months. I'll also begin teaching business English at a company in the mornings as soon as the details get worked out. (The place where I work holds group classes at the center and then also sends native-speaking teachers out to companies to teach groups of employees.) I should also start working at a second school next week as well. I'm starting work right on time...my shoes are beginning to fall apart and I really need new ones.

I've been reading a lot during my underground commutes. There are always tons of people reading in the metro--newspapers, novels, crosswords. For the most part nobody talks in the metro--everyone just sits in silence and read. With my 30-minute commute to the center every day and then other time spent on the metro I always get a good 1-2 hours of reading time in every day. I read the entirety of David McCullough's 1776 in the past few weeks (sort of an odd choice to read a book about the American Revolution while I'm living in Russia) and now I'm about 300 pages into the EPIC Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky (only 500 more pages to go!).

I really love not having a car here--I don't have to worry about gas prices, I spend a fraction of what I used to spend with a car on my monthly transport pass, and I get to read while I'm in transit instead of needing to pay attention to the road. I don't see why some people insist on owning 3-4 vehicles and then claim that it's a "convenience." I find it much more convenient to live in a place where it's not a necessity to own a car. It will definitely be a case of reverse culture shock for me when (or maybe it's better for me in this case to use the word "if") I go back to the states and once again live in a place where I will be required to have a car.

As you can see from this post, my English is suffering.

My camera is back!

I have my camera back! After an "extended vacation" in Finland, my camera made it safely across the border and back into my hands. Now I just need to start taking pictures so I can post something on here...

...which I will do soon!!

Goal for the Week:

Try to eat at least one meal a day that doesn't involve mayonnaise.

(It's harder than it sounds.)

If you want to make a Russian REALLY upset...

...bring up the results of the Mens Figure Skating competition from the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The Art of Mushroom Hunting

Well, a lot has happened since the last post but I since my internet access is still pretty limited, I haven't been able to update the blog. Or check my email. Or Facebook. Or find out who won the U.S. Open. Right now I'm writing this from a McDonalds in the center of St. Petersburg before I need to go to my Russian lesson in a few hours. I bought a small chocolate milkshake so I wouldn't feel bad about using their Wi-Fi.

I still don't have my camera--It was in fact left under my friends' couch in Finland and I'll hopefully have it back in about two weeks. I have friends going to Finland next week and so a hand-off has been arranged.

Last weekend I participated in a major Russian pastime. While Americans spend their weekends in the fall watching college football, Russian go to the forest to pick mushrooms. Yes, you read that correctly. Last Saturday morning at an insanely early hour, seven of my friends (Masha, Masha, Kostya, Sasha, Olya, Dima, and Polina, to be exact) piled into two cars and drove about an hour outside of St. Petersburg. This whole area is very densely forested and in the late-summer and autumn months there are lots of mushrooms that sprout up. The locals then INVADE the forests to wipe them clean of any edible mushroom.

Suffice it to say that I learned way more about mushrooms than I ever thought possible last Saturday. I learned how to tell between the bad ones and the good ones, what colors to be looking for, the names of all of the different varieties (none of which I would know in English), and that, like in fishing, if you're too loud then you scare the mushrooms away.

At the beginning of our hunt I'll admit that I thought it was all a bit silly, but then I found my first mushroom. I was hooked after that. After about four or five hours of scanning the forest for every possibly edible fungi, we all went back to St. Petersburg and after surviving insane drivers and absolutely ridiculous traffic jams to get back to the city, we cleaned up, chopped up, and cooked up all the mushrooms and had a feast.

I still don't really like to EAT mushrooms, but I am now a full-fledged fan of searching for mushrooms.

On another note, I now (finally) have a place to live. I am renting a room from a family I know from church in the southwest corner of the city. Right now there are six people living in the apartment representing three generations overall and tomorrow my landlady's daughter-in-law is flying in from Scotland for two months. (Her husband is getting his Ph.D. in Scotland but she is finishing up her Master's degree here in St. Pete so she comes to Russia a few months out of the year.) Seven people in one apartment MIGHT seem a bit ridiculous but because Russians are accustomed to living in cozy conditions, it works out quite well.

Either today or tomorrow I'll be buying a mini internet modem that will allow me to have internet access wherever I go with my laptop so now I'll be able to update my blog more often. And check my email. And Facebook. Now to find out who won the US Open...

"I asked you about BREAKFAST! Not YOGURT!!"

That my friends is a quote that I randomly heard on the street today from an irritated mother who was scolding her young son.

Things have been great so far in St. Pete! Yesterday I had my first Russian lesson with my private instructor and it went very well. She came into the lesson thinking that I spoke no Russian at all. Let's just say she was pleasantly surprised when she found out that wasn't the case. :) Today I went back to the same place for my first training session for my English-teaching certification. (For those people who may not be completely aware, I am here in St. Petersburg studying Russian and I will also be working as an English teacher for the same company.) The company itself seems really great--the main director is American and the other people that work there are a mix of Russians and native-English speakers from various places around the world. I was a little bit nervous about what to expect because up until I got here my only interaction with this company had been through e-mail but now I'm breathing a big sigh of relief because it seems so far to be better than I anticipated!

Other milestone events:

-I bought a cheap Nokia phone today.

-I almost have a place to live. (I'll be checking a place out on Thursday which is probably where I'll end up living.)

-The first thing I noticed walking around the city yesterday is that there are a ton of wrecked cars driving around on the streets--smashed bumpers, missing headlights, you name it. And I've witnessed several wrecks since I've been here. Good thing I usually ride the metro!

-The second thing I noticed yesterday was that there are a lot of well, um, interesting hairstyles here. Very unique. And strange. And awful.

The traditional "I lost my camera" post

In Summer 2009 I blogged about how I lost my camera in the London airport. Some of you may remember that tragedy. Well, in order to keep with tradition, it turns out that I left my camera in Finland. However, this time it wasn't on a train platform in the biggest airport in the world but instead this time I left it at my friends' apartment where I stayed Saturday night. So unlike The London Disaster, this time I will see my camera again. However, it also means that the blog is going to remain photo-less for a while longer...atleast from photos taken on my camera. Sorry.


Finland was great! I'm glad that it's so close and that I'll be able to visit there semi-regularly. Well, after December that is when my visa will allow me to be able to leave Russia. (I can't leave the country for three months. After that I'll be able to come and go as I please.)

Yesterday, Polina, Olya (my two friends from St. Pete who were in Finland this past week and whom I met up with after I arrived), and I took a mini-bus from Helsinki to St. Petersburg. Normally it's about a 5-hour drive but this time it took a little bit longer because we were stuck on the Finnish border for over an hour. (No, not because of me.) There was a Russian girl on the bus who had apparently overstayed her visa to Finland and so that's what caused the massive delay. Luckily it wasn't raining though so we just hung out outside and got to know the other passengers.

We arrived in St. Pete last night around 11:30 PM. All the palaces and bridges were lit up--It's really such an amazing sight. Even though I've been a fairly frequent resident/visitor of the city for the last 7 years I'm still always blown away every time I come here by how impressive the city looks. Imagine Dubai or Las Vegas only everything was built (very tastefully) in the 1700's and there you have St. Petersburg. (The picture above is just a photo I found online to give you an idea of what St. Pete looks like at night.) Since I had my luggage with me, our friend Shurik was nice enough to pick us up in the center of the city in his car and take me to the place where I was spending the night.

Now off to my first day of work/school/life in my new city!

Fun in FINLAND!

I will post pictures soon but just wanted to let you know that I arrived in Finland safely yesterday afternoon and have been having a great time so far. I'll be here for one more night--tomorrow afternoon I'm taking a bus to St. Petersburg. It should "only" be about a 5 hour ride.

I would try to write more right now but it seems that jetlag has made me completely incapable of remembering both my native language and where the keys on the keyboard are so I'll spare you the pain of making you read my rambling.

My Trek through NYC

Last week I had to go down to New York City to have my visa documents processed at the Russian consulate office. On Monday morning I went to the consulate and after waiting in line for an hour was able to drop off my application and all the other necessary documents. The consulate then gave me a receipt and told me to come back on Thursday to pick up my visa. That meant three days waiting in the city with nothing to do.

On Monday and Tuesday I was able to find enough things to entertain myself with museums and $0.99 slices of pizza but on Wednesday I ventured out to do something that I've thought about doing for a long time--I walked the entire length of Manhattan.

Early Wednesday afternoon I got on the subway and rode up to the 215th Street stop and from there walked up to the top of the island along the Harlem River, found Broadway, and started walking.

After 5.5 hours of continuous walking down Broadway (which runs the entire length of the island) and going through neighborhoods that spanned every possible tax bracket, I finished up on the south side of the island at Battery Park with a view of the Statue of Liberty. By the end it felt like there was nothing between the bones of my feet and the concrete of the sidewalks but overall I was proud of myself for my great feat of human strength. Climbing Everest should be a breeze for me now.

Here's the chronological photo-tour of the event:

McDonalds in Novgorod?!?!?!

I am currently in the ancient, extremely historical, and relatively quiet city (population 250,000) of Novgorod. Not much happens in Novgorod...until now.

The opening of the first McDonalds in Novgorod happened just last week right before the new year. This is probably the most important event in the history of the city since Alexander Nevsky himself defeated the invading Swedes in the 13th century. It's a big deal.

To celebrate this most important of occasions my friend Roma and I went to McDonalds today for lunch. The line was ridiculous. Seeing as I am well-versed in the language of Russian McDonalds after having spent extensive time there in St. Petersburg, it unexpectedly became my duty to instruct the still uneducated peasants of Novgorod about McDonalds. For example, in St. Petersburg (and everywhere else in the Russian-speaking world with a population fluent in McDonalds), the slang term for this most divine of institutions is "McDak" (pronounced: Mac-Duck). So when I suggested to the people here in Novgorod that we go to "MacDak," I got some weird looks.

"Why did you just call McDonalds 'McDak'?"

Oh, they have so much to learn.

Luckily I explained it to them very quickly so they will now be "in the know" when they go out in public.

After we finally pushed our way through the line and got to the cashier I proceeded to make my order. In Russia-McDak language, an extra-value meal is called a "lunch" (pronounced in Russian as "obyed"). Normally in St. Petersburg I just say at the register that I want an "обед с Биг Маком" ('obyed' with a Big Mac) and they immediately understand. Their next question is always "Cola to drink?" and my answer is usually, "Cola Lite please." It works like clockwork. So here in Novgorod I gave my usual order and the girl behind the register just stared at me. "Um, we don't have 'lunch.'" I then pointed to the menu and explained that it meant I wanted a Big Mac, a medium fry, and a medium drink. She still looked confused.

Oh, they have so much to learn.

Russia never sleeps.

Russians are definitely nocturnal creatures.

The night before I left for Finland I stayed up until 3 in the morning chatting with Svetlana (aka my Russian mom) in her kitchen.

The night after we got back from Finland, Masha, Kostya, Shurik, and I made dinner at about 10 PM, after which we spent the next three hours driving around the center of St. Petersburg with a video camera. While most normal people would be sleeping, we were playing leap-frog on Nevsky at 2:00 AM.

Last night after getting home to the Brothers Sergeev at 11 PM we also once again ate and then got ready for bed but then started talking...4.5 hours later we went to bed. We all woke up very late this morning (or was it early afternoon...).

And now tonight I just got in at about 12:30 after sledding on what once was the motte outside the walls of the Novgorod kremlin...and bedtime doesn't look like it's coming very soon...

New Year in FINLAND

On Wednesday we ('We' being myself, Kostya, Masha, and Shurik for those who care) drove eight hours (2.5 of which was getting through St. Pete traffic jams) to Espoo, Finland, which is right near Helsinki. It took us about an hour to get through the border. On the Russian side we had to get out of the car and stand in line in FREEZING weather for about 40 minutes. It was around -15 Celsius. When we got to the Finnish side of the border we got to go inside a nice warm building and it took about 10 minutes. Or maybe less. Yeah, Finland is a bit more aware of things like personal comfort and hypothermia.

FINLAND is so cool!! I have never been here before and we will still be here for two more days. Temple, a freak mall shooting about a kilometer from where we're staying...good thing we were at the temple and not there, moose crossing signs all over the roads here, hours in a Finnish sauna, running around in the snow wearing practically next to nothing (Don't be shocked...it IS Scandinavia), an almost empty water park where the vast majority of everyone there was Russian, McDonalds (Finland is country #11), a really fun New Years Eve dance with kids from the church here, fireworks in the freezing cold at midnight, and still so much more fun to have!!!!

Meeting a lot of the Finnish YSA last night was fun. They all look like they just stepped out of some eclectic fashion magazine. Their hair was along the lines of 'I might look like I just got out of bed, but actually I spent hours sculpting it into the perfected form you see before you,' and their clothing was along the lines of 'I look like I just stepped out of 1988 but actually all of these clothes have designer tags on them and my left sock cost more than everything you are wearing right now.' Yup, my pullover on sale from the Gap and new Skechers just didn't measure up. But they are all super cool and really nice! and we're going to another crazy party with them all tonight! (Crazy by Mormon standards of course, which means that we'll have a ton of fun and still be able to remember it all tomorrow.)

More later!! Finland rocks!!!!