С НОВЫМ ГОДОМ!!!

H A P P Y N E W Y E A R !!!!!!

Last night was great. Really great. I always put so much damn pressure on myself to have a good new year's, to have the best new year's yet, and I am usually let down. Not that I don't have fun but, you know, it's just the same old thing.

Well, I finally met my goal this new year's because St. Petersburg really knows how to throw a new year's party. The description of what I actually did makes the evening sound kind of lame: I met up with Carrie, Maneka and Emma on Nevksy and we walked to palace square and then sat in the garden in front of the Admiralty and drank red Ukrainian champagne out of the bottle and then at midnight watched fireworks.... but it was the best fucking time. There was just complete chaos -- the street was packed, the entire Dvorstovsky Bridge was so full of people it looked like it could break, just mobs and mobs and everyone drinking champagne in little plastic cups and singing and fireworks that lasted for hours after midnight. God, Russians love fireworks. I woke up at 8:00AM to send a half-asleep text message to Mom, and I could still hear someone setting off fireworks across the street. And fireworks are so much better this time of year as it is actually dark out so you can see them for a change. It was just beautiful and overwhelming and gave me a really good, solid feeling about humanity or some nonsense like that. And then, like fate or something, after I'd left the Americans, I ran into Katya, Misha and Stas on my way home and hung out with them for a little bit -- standing around behind Kazanskii Sobor with their Canadian friends. The area around the Grebedova canal back there has been under construction for all the past seven months that I have been here, but then last night, perhaps on the occassion of the holiday, suddenly all of the blue barriers were removed and you know what had been hidden behind them all this time and I had no idea? That iconic, famous St. Petersburg bridge with the four griffins with golden wings and lamps above their heads, the one that is plastered all over postcards that somewhere in my subconscious I had been wondering all this time why I had yet to see it and where it was located.... and there it was. And the sky was clear and I was in such a good mood, such a stark comparison to last new year's eve, and we're just standing around drinking champagne under this gorgeous bridge. This is by far my favorite part of living in a city like St. Petersburg: these old, ancient, elegant, iconic things become part of your every day life.

And so, I can safely say, this was the best New Year's I've had. Not that I didn't enjoy all those years of board games with the parents or doing head stands at midnight with Rosie in my basement, but they were in a different time in my life. This was exactly the kind of New Year's I wanted this year.

So, I have about four hundred pictures from the festivities last night.... plus one and a half memory cards from Kiev.... plus pictures from my epic busy Christmas eve.... actually, the start up disk on my computer is almost full and I only have about half of those on there to edit, so I'm going to need a bit more time editing them all and moving them onto my hard drive and such. So, be patient. But hey, I have no more school and no more anything really until January 9th, so they'll probably be up..... later today or something. But I make no promises!

Though I do promise the entry about Kiev will come soon!