And then there were three. Ten Little Indians, anyone?

So now only Ilana, Emma and I are left from our program in this city. Everyone else I have grown to know and cherish in Russia is off somewhere else now, and soon Ilana will be off in Moscow with her mom for a few days and Emma and I are leaving even sooner (tonight!) for our traveling adventures for the ten days in between our programs. Mass exodus of Americans.

The internet at home is down -- it seems to go down when it rains a lot, which I don't really understand, but it seems to be true. So I am at a little internet cafe behind my house that isn't outrageously expensive, 60r/hour, but I am so glad I have internet at home because that would add up considering how much time I spend uploading photos and such nonsense. Anyway, I thought I'd make the effort to go out in the rain and use the internet one last time before I get on a bus tonight to Helsinki as I am very, very behind in telling you all the details of my life and am not taking my computer with me while traveling, so you might not hear from me again until August 20th. Brace yourselves, it will be difficult, I know, but we'll get through it.

So last you heard from me I was going nuts around the time of the boat trip. That was on Wednesday. Damn that was ages ago. So, yeah. We had a boat trip. Technically I guess it was a tour where we were supposed to look at and learn about all the buildings along the shores of the city, but all we did was drink champagne and eat perog from Stolle and watch this one crazy Russian guy swimming in the middle of the Neva and almost get run over by boats.

Thursday afternoon Adams and I made up our own cultural excursion. We tried to go to this museum that is the history of photography but it is closed until September 2nd, so I'll have to go later on my own. We checked out the Botanical Gardens on Petrograd that were right near the museum though -- a place that Adams has been wanting to go to forever -- and were not disappointed. The sun came out in full force as we walked along the entire perimeter of the garden looking for the entrance to the place. By the time we got there the greenhouse with the ancient tropical plants and such was already closed, but we wandered the grounds and listened to a rowdy wedding reception and found a ruined old building in the place and took a lot of pictures. Dad, I took over 100 pictures of flowers just for you.

Thursday night Poetry Club had our final party -- me, Sasha, Adams, Ilana and our fearless leader Philipp, hanging out at Adams's apartment on Petrograd, drinking champagne and reading Mayakovsky out loud while Philipp fawned over the hairless cat that lives with Adams. We also then did a photo shoot by the abandoned library next to Adams's apartment, Dead Poets Society meets St. Petersburg style. Basically it was the most pretentiously intellectual thing I have done in a while, that whole evening, but shit it was a lot of fun.

Friday I had my final exam and once that nonsense was over my brain nearly exploded trying to comprehend how I was already done with the summer program. What is happening to my life. All of a sudden I am going to be 90 years old. Anyway, that's not the point. Friday afternoon I had a Cool! English meeting with William (we did more podcasts, they should be up soon) and then Friday evening there was a small party in my apartment for Olga's birthday. Friday morning before school I gave Olga her birthday present which she liked and I was glad about -- I had prints made of the black and white Holga photos I took at the dacha, those six, and framed my favorite one. Then around 6pm on Friday, Katya, Katya's friend Olga, Olga's friend from Moscow who is visiting, Lydia Vitalvnaya (Olga's friend who gave me and Abby the tour of the city) and Katya's godmother all came over and we had a party that Olga referred to as our "женский коллектив" (women's collective). We drank champagne (my god, so much champagne in my life this week) and ate ice cream with fruit and toasted to Olga's health amongst other things. It was funny because the whole party reminded me so much of my life at home -- Olga even bought fun crazy straws and straws with paper fruits on them and it all seemed like the kind of birthday party Mom and Nunni would throw. Once again, how did I get placed with the family that is so similar to my family at home? Ridiculous.

Post-женский коллектив, Friday night was everyone's last night in Petersburg, so Hart had a party at his apartment. I took it upon myself to DJ which felt pretty good as I hadn't done it in a while and it took some skill considering Hart's very eclectic assortment of music. But it was a good time. There was even some dancing briefly.

Saturday was my last day to hang out with everyone, so Sasha, Adams and I (along with Philipp, Hart, Hart's friend and Jonah) finally got out act together to go to Udelnaya. The weather was shitty at first and it looked like we were going to fail one final time, but we said what the hell and went anyway and by the time we got there it wasn't raining anymore and the sun even appeared briefly. Anyway, this was my second time at Udelnaya but the last time I went it was during the week so only the stands with all the clothes and nonsense near the metro were out. The good part, the part where people literally sell items off of blankets in the mud (I totally thought Carly was exaggerating when she told me she bought everything in Russia off of a blanket in the mud. No, seriously. Blankets in the mud. And there was so much mud because of the rain.) is only out during the weekend. So we went and browsed through a lot of shit -- things that I can't even figure out why people are trying to sell them, like a pair of broken scissors for 10r or what have you -- but found some treasures. Adams and I, of course, spent all our time hunting for old cameras and we both ended up finding one. For 100r ($4) he got a little plastic guy of some Soviet model that I now forget. And I could not control myself and splurged on a 500r ($20) Fed 5B camera in really good condition. The coolest thing about this camera is that it is the 1980 Moscow Olympic edition, which seems all to appropriate that I bought it on the first real day of the 2008 Olympic games. Adams went home and did a little research after Udelnaya, turns out his camera goes for $90 in the States and mine for $150. Good job, us. So now we have a new career opportunity involving exporting Russian cameras. Excellent.

On Saturday I also figured out how to use Theatre Kassa and buy tickets to concerts and plays and such. It's actually not complicated at all, just one of those other things I'm glad I now know how to do. Makes me feel that much more ahead of the kids that will show up soon for the fall. Anyway, now the week after I get back from traveling Ilana and I are going to see Sigur Ros and I am also going to go see a play version of The Master and Margarita that is being put on as part of a theatre festival. I can't wait.

Saturday night was everyone's real last night in Russia, as the group flight was leaving at 6:15am on Sunday morning. Because of the fact that the bridges go up around 1am, the bus had to pick everyone up earlier, starting around 10pm, and then took the group to a cafe to eat blini and hang out briefly before going to the airport. A bunch of us who were not going on the flight -- Ilana, Emma, me and four of the tutors: Liza, Vika, Kristina and Tanya -- all tagged along on the "party bus." We drank more champagne (Everyone's final night! Come on!) and Jonah played his banjo on the bus and there were sing-a-longs and then it was 3am and we were eating blini and then it was 4:30am and we had to leave everyone at the airport. It was actually pretty upsetting. Some of the tutors actually cried on the bus when we had to say good bye to everyone. I think that might be one of the hardest things about being here all year is going to be getting attached to people and having them leave, and then getting attached to new people, and having to see them leave too, and then at the end of it all having to be the one to leave everyone. Hopefully all this will be worth the heartache.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to. Today I just slept all day and packed and tried to fix the internet but failed miserably and am now here. Emma and I are leaving around 9pm tonight and will arrive in Helsinki tomorrow. Don't worry, our travel plans do not involve going anywhere near Georgia. For those of you who are not great with geography, do not fear. I am not going to get involved in war conflict by accident.

As for photos, I have been taking a lot. I didn't get to finish uploading all of the new ones, but I got partially through the botanical gardens. I also added polaroids that I took on the boat tour, and, of course, as always, my self-portraits. It's going to be interesting though how I'm going to keep up the self-portrait thing while traveling. It bothers me in an OCD kind of way that the pictures of myself from the next ten days will not be in the same location as all the others, not even the same location as each other, and that annoys me at an aesthetic level. But I am going to try to recreate my scene as best as possible -- same height of the camera, sitting on a bed, same depressed serious look you all love to complain about. So we'll see how it goes. Adams suggested I can always photoshop myself into a picture of my room if I really want to.

And if any of you who just left me are reading this...... SASHA, ADAMS, LOUIS, PHILIPP, HART, AMBER, ERIKA, JONAH, NATHAN, LAUREN, BECKY, STEPHEN, EMILY, BETHANY, AMANDA, TESS, MEAGHAN -- I hope you all made it home okay.

Get ready for an even longer entry and about a thousand billion pictures when I come back in ten days.