Thursday thursday thursday thursday.

First off, I heard about this story from Michael Patrick Broderick, all the way in Concord, Massachusetts, and apparently it happened right here in my city. Wild.

So I have an exam tomorrow because it's the end of the first four weeks. That's pretty lame. It's Thursday night. I don't want to be sitting in staring at a sheet about verbs of motion. I want to walk around. Lame, lame.

Today we had our cultural excursion to one of St. Petersburg's many (maybe it's only two) museums about the blockade. I felt bad because our tour guide was this friendly Russian man who seemed very interested in what he was saying, but as a rule Russian men mumble even more when they speak than the average Russian speaker and so I had no idea what he was saying and lost interest in following the tour. Instead I wandered and looked at the sad crayon drawings small children had done during the blockade of people in the snow and tanks and bombs. I then resorted to taking abstract photos of the Russian letters on the walls because I liked the font and their shadows. Pictures will be up eventually. Maybe later tonight, when I am "studying."

And then, as usual, we had our post-excursion coffee hour. This time it was me, Grace, Emma, Louis, Emily & Bethany and we went to Stolle, but this time a different Stolle (gasp!). There are a couple Stolle locations all over the city -- at least three -- and this time we went to the one by the Marinskii Theatre. Naturally I am biased because I love our original Stolle because it is our original Stolle..... that first love kind of bias. But this one was also good and closer to where I live and they had more selections of perog to choose from. This time we branched out and had cherry and raspberry (malina!) instead of just good old strawberry.

So that was my Thursday. Yup.

Oh! And I got attacked by pigeons twice today!

The first time was when I was walking from the metro stop to Smolny. There is this place, kind of a pile of sand, where all these pigeons are always sleeping every morning when I am walking to school -- it actually brings me amusement every morning to see them lying in little balls on the ground like they all just fell out of the air and died. Then, I don't know, something happened and all of the sleeping pigeons -- maybe 50 of them -- immediately woke up and flew off, except they were all flying at a height of about 4 to 6 feet off the ground. Oh my god they all came right at me and seemed not to care if they plowed into me. I actually shrieked a little bit, quite out of character, and a Russian man walking by chuckled as a pigeon almost hit him in the head.

Then the second time was between classes and our cultural excursion. I went to the street near the metro to go to the Apteka to buy some more band-aids and tape for my blisters (this alone was one of those little victories because Aptekas are very intimidating pharmacies where everything is behind a glass cabinet and you have to ask for and explain exactly what you want. It is a nightmare for a non-Russian speaker). So then I wanted to sit somewhere to change my band-aids and I found a bench, right near where the pigeons had already once attacked me (I don't know why I thought this was a good idea). So I sit down and am adjusting my band-aids when I notice that the old woman sitting on the bench across from me is pulling some kind of bag of seeds from her purse. No sooner does she have a handful of the stuff in her palm when about 500 pigeons and finches come out of NOWHERE and are all over my bench, the old woman's bench, the ground between us, and coating the old woman herself. It looked like she was wearing a coat made of pigeon feathers. It was ridiculous. I decided that hell must be full of pigeons. I tried to get a picture that accurately portrayed the situation, but alas, no picture could portray exactly what it is like to be surrounded by about 500 dirty Russian birds. Oy vey.