Well, Ami left this fabulous city and country last night on a late train to Riga and so my life returns to normal for....... a few hours. Not for long though as today is Halloween, not quite a normal day, followed by what promises to be a not-quite-a-normal weekend in Moscow with the group. Hm.
You've probably been wondering what Ami and I have been up to for all of these days when you have been deprived of entertaining commentary on St. Petersburg to read. Well, let me give you the complete list of all of our activities...... but just a list, as you will be able to read about all the sordid details in the next Greetings-From-Russia Counterpoint column I will be writing together with Ami about her time here with me.
So. Here's everything that Ami managed to pack into her six days in St. Petersburg:
ACTIVITIES:
1. during time waiting in Moscow -- saw Red Square thanks to Bryan's friend.
2. Kuntskamera with Lauren while I was in printmaking.
3. the newly discovered and fabulous Zoological Museum (has more taxidermied animals than I would say even the Natural History Museum in NYC!)
4. a performance of the Swan Lake ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre that made the version we saw this summer look even trashier.
5. a Saturday-night trip to Fidel.
6. witnessing daylight savings time in Russia (now we have a 7 hour time difference) and the earlier darkness and the pending winter.
7. a Sunday trip to Udelnaya where many a weird junky treasure was purchased.
8. saw the inside and the outside of Church of Spilled Blood.
9. saw the outside of St. Isaac's, the Bronze Horseman, the Admiralty.
10. saw the inside and the outside of Kazansky Sobor (it was just how I remembered it when I was in there in 2005 with Mom, Nunni & Puppy -- dark and smokey and smelling of beeswax, with a service going on and a capella church hymns that reminded me of Christmas).
11. Halloween costume-making of many kinds.
12. multiple trips to the market behind Church of the Spilled Blood.
13. two attempts to get into the Summer Gardens when they were already closed, finally getting in on the third try and walking through in the rain.
14. the Hermitage.
15. the Russian Museum (complete with power outage!).
16. multiple trips to the consignment stores.
17. Tuesday-night trip to Mod.
18. Wednesday-night trip to Dacha.
19. impromptou sleep over with Ilana that involved depression pink nail painting.
20. the Arctic/Antarctic Museum (where there were no less than THREE tours of school kids).
21. the Museum of Bread (where Ami set off an alarm).
22. the Museum of Hygine (finished with their renovations since this summer -- how??? I'm so impressed!! -- also with multiple groups on tour.... what???)
23. finally seeing the inside of the Vladimirskaya Church which I walk by at least twice every day.
24. Lauren's choral concert.
25. the view of the Hermitage, etc from Peter & Paul's fortress at night.
26. trip to the army-navy store on Petrograd.
27. walking around the inside of Peter & Paul's fortress.
28. witnessing one of her own letters arrive at Office 416 all the way from Italy.
MEALS:
1. breakfast at Chainaya Lozka.
2. lunch twice at two different Stolles.
3. dinner at the schwarma place near Dumskaya.
4. dinner twice in Teremok.
5. business lunch at the Georgian place near the Vasileostrovskaya Metro.
6. business lunch at Tequila Boom.
7. ice cream at McDonald's.
8. dinner at the Chinese place near Cherniskevskaya.
9. late night dinner at the Caucasian restaurant with Ilana.
10. breakfast at that pastry place on Nevsky.
11. dinner at Yolky Palky.
12. coffee at the mall on Marata (while looking for Halloween costumes).
13. Uzbek bread lunch from the market.
14. the most amazing cake in the world on Thursday night.
TRANSPORTATION:
1. an overnight train from Moscow ---> St. Petersburg.
2. an overnight train from St. Petersburg ---> Riga.
3. many, many buses.
4. even more walking.
5. enough metro-riding to warrant two 10 ride cards.
See?? We were BUSY.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
Hmm, slight change in plans...
Thus you hearing from me again.
So Ami had some technical difficulties and long story short is boarding an overnight train in two hours and will be arriving at 7am tomorrow morning instead. Anyhoo, still excited!!!!
But this means you get to hear amusing antidotes from my day right now instead.
1. Story about the importance of phonetics that happened while in Phonetics class: so we were talking about professors, whatever, and I was saying how my sister is a surgeon (хирург "hirurk") and Svetlana Borisovna wanted to know what kind of surgeon. I didn't know how to say "reconstructive" or "plastic" po-russki, and I forgot the word for "car accident" so I said "Well, when a person has been in a car..." (Когда человек был в машине.... "Kagda chelovek bil v mashinye...")..... BUT Svetlana Borisovna heard me say "Когда человек был мужщина..." ("Kagda chelovek bil myshinye..." which means "When a person used to be a man...." So she spent at least five solid minutes explaining to me the terms for trans-gender surgery and when I explained no, no, I meant "car" not "man" we both realized I need to ennuciate more. HA.
2. To quote a certain mother of mine, today -- MAIL CALL!
a. Well, actually, it was yesterday, but JANNA!!! I finally got your little cardboard cube of a package and it was filled with such delightful things! Scratch magic stickers?!? Growing dinosaurs?? Everyone was quite jealous.
b. Carly, today I got your hipster postcard! I love it! Especially the gold pen. It's quite fabulous.
c. Oh, and what finally came today? That's right -- my absentee ballot. Woohoo. So, I guess now I can fill it out if I want and if by some miracle it comes in time they will count that over my emegency ballot..... or maybe I'll just frame it instead.
3. Not that I don't love having class on Fridays until 8pm, but Bakhtin was CANCELED today. And it was a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful thing.
So that's it. NOW you won't hear from me.
So Ami had some technical difficulties and long story short is boarding an overnight train in two hours and will be arriving at 7am tomorrow morning instead. Anyhoo, still excited!!!!
But this means you get to hear amusing antidotes from my day right now instead.
1. Story about the importance of phonetics that happened while in Phonetics class: so we were talking about professors, whatever, and I was saying how my sister is a surgeon (хирург "hirurk") and Svetlana Borisovna wanted to know what kind of surgeon. I didn't know how to say "reconstructive" or "plastic" po-russki, and I forgot the word for "car accident" so I said "Well, when a person has been in a car..." (Когда человек был в машине.... "Kagda chelovek bil v mashinye...")..... BUT Svetlana Borisovna heard me say "Когда человек был мужщина..." ("Kagda chelovek bil myshinye..." which means "When a person used to be a man...." So she spent at least five solid minutes explaining to me the terms for trans-gender surgery and when I explained no, no, I meant "car" not "man" we both realized I need to ennuciate more. HA.
2. To quote a certain mother of mine, today -- MAIL CALL!
a. Well, actually, it was yesterday, but JANNA!!! I finally got your little cardboard cube of a package and it was filled with such delightful things! Scratch magic stickers?!? Growing dinosaurs?? Everyone was quite jealous.
b. Carly, today I got your hipster postcard! I love it! Especially the gold pen. It's quite fabulous.
c. Oh, and what finally came today? That's right -- my absentee ballot. Woohoo. So, I guess now I can fill it out if I want and if by some miracle it comes in time they will count that over my emegency ballot..... or maybe I'll just frame it instead.
3. Not that I don't love having class on Fridays until 8pm, but Bakhtin was CANCELED today. And it was a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful thing.
So that's it. NOW you won't hear from me.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
La de da deeee da.
So I don't think you're really interested in hearing about how I'm in such a good mood because I got all organized and ahead on nonsense and cleaned my room and stuff today and yesterday.
That kind of thing is really only thrilling for yours truly.
But you may be interested to know why I was in such a flurry of preparation.
Oh, that's right:
AMI D. LI ARRIVES IN ST. PETERSBURG TOMORROW NIGHT.
Basically, this is my way of saying sorry, kids, these two Counterpoint overseas correspondents will be busy painting the town red (quote: kcosta) and the blog just might have to become not-top priority.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
GET EXCITED
That kind of thing is really only thrilling for yours truly.
But you may be interested to know why I was in such a flurry of preparation.
Oh, that's right:
AMI D. LI ARRIVES IN ST. PETERSBURG TOMORROW NIGHT.
Basically, this is my way of saying sorry, kids, these two Counterpoint overseas correspondents will be busy painting the town red (quote: kcosta) and the blog just might have to become not-top priority.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
GET EXCITED
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Two very important things:
1. New pictures are up....... starting on the bottom of page 3 you've got the picnic, the printmaking, the ballet, the after-the-ballet, the aleksandr nevsky lavra, the dvors, the skyping and the reunion. I also put up better shots of the prints I did on Saturday under my non-photographic section...
2. A devoted reader of my blog who is currently pining away for St. Petersburg and planning his return for the winter turns 22 years old today. Let's give a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to MR. ADAMS CARROLL!
3. I also feel that another devoted reader of my blog, whose 22nd birthday I missed eleven days ago because I was in Pskov and distracted by cat photos, deserves a belated shoutout: HAPPY BIRTHDAY MS. KCOSTA!
So many people are born in October, it blows my mind every year.
2. A devoted reader of my blog who is currently pining away for St. Petersburg and planning his return for the winter turns 22 years old today. Let's give a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to MR. ADAMS CARROLL!
3. I also feel that another devoted reader of my blog, whose 22nd birthday I missed eleven days ago because I was in Pskov and distracted by cat photos, deserves a belated shoutout: HAPPY BIRTHDAY MS. KCOSTA!
So many people are born in October, it blows my mind every year.
Things and things and things.
Busy busy busy busy busy busy busy busy but for any of you who know me even vaguely you know that this is my norm. As Meri said the other day, "I think you're overscheduled...." Probably true, but oh well. It happens. So goes my life.
MONDAY was kind of bizarre as Mondays go because I took.... four buses? I never take the bus. What is this nonsense. The first one I took was from Nevsky (where I was running errands in the morning) to school. The second one was from school to the Church of the Spilled Blood. The third one was from Nevsky to the dorms. And the fourth one was from the dorms to the Primorskaya metro (it was dark and cold and Emma and I were tired, okay? don't judge), followed by the metro home. Yes, Monday was a banner day for St. Petersburg transportation.
But, you may wonder, what did I do in the periods of time when I was not feeling vaguely nauseated on a bus stuck in traffic, unable to read due to the certainty I would vomit? (this is why I hate buses, the metro is so much better). Well, let me tell you.
The school part was dull. I had my first RSL exam in conversation class. You don't want to know. It's boring.
But why was I tramping over to the Church of the Spilled Blood randomly at 3pm on a Monday afternoon? Oh, that's right, just to meet up with Meri's dear friend and buddy and suite mate and nonsense from Georgetown, MARY ORTON. Yes, eat your heart out. I think we can officially say we are friends after meeting up together in ST. PETERSBURG. Sure, Mary and I hung out when I visited Meri in DC last January and in the spring before I left, but this was slightly more extreme and therefore slightly more epic and awesome. Mary is currently studying abroad in Copenhagen (she said everyone is super friendly and speaks English better than she does.... places like that exist??) and is on a fall break trip with her group in Russia. And.... ahh!!! We met up! It was so exciting. Look, we even got photographic evidence:
I also got to meet other American students who are studying in St. Petersburg for the semester or the year thanks to Mary. Mary's friend Tim from Georgetown is studying here for the semester with a different program from mine, and he also met us at the Church of the Spilled Blood along with four of his friends from his program. It was kind of funny to be hanging out with a big group of Americans all who had nothing to do with my program, some of whom don't speak Russian, while wandering through the market behind the Church of the Spilled Blood. I'll chalk it off as surreal experience number 8346236823 in Russia.
We then ended up settling at a well known ex-pat bar in the area and having a beer and sharing studying abroad stories. The contrast between studying in Copenhagen vs. studying in St. Petersburg is insane. It was nice to do that thing though with the other Americans where you share absurd stories about ridiculous things that have happened to you while living your daily life in the city ("You almost had your arm broken by a babushka shoving you on the metro too??"). Makes you feel more sane.
What was quite convenient though was the bar we settled at is called The Other Side, and it is the bar owned by that expat New Yorker Doug who I met through Cool! English when recording a couple weeks ago. Well last Wednesday I recorded again for Cool! English and Doug was once again there and told me that on Monday night the 20th his bar would be having an event where a rep from the U.S. Consulate would be there who could accept already filled out absentee ballots and issue emergency ballots if yours had not come yet. Well, as my absentee ballot is currently lost somewhere trans-atlantic, the skinny guy in the suit with the yellow tie and the blue shirt (how American!) gave me an emergency ballot which I filled out with some difficulty (the envelopes are so complicated! what the hell!) but can now proudly say that I voted in my first presidental election while sipping Russian beer in a bar full of expats. And who did I vote for? Sorry, Puppy, your liberal granddaughter is at it again. Remember, kids, Barack Obama has a "c" in his name. That was close. But very satisfying. And when I came home and proudly told Olga, Misha and Katya that I voted today, they were impressed. "Maladetst! (good job)," said Olga. "Oh, you voted for the black guy," said Katya.
Other Smolny kids met up with me at The Other Side to vote/turn in ballots as well, and then Lauren, Emma and I headed off to TACO NIGHT (hosted by Ilana Tabby) at the dorm. Yes. Unfortunately all of Ilana's homemade guacamole was gone by the time we got there, but her homemade salsa was amazing (who knew they had ingredients for such things in Russia?) and we got to meet some of the friends they are making in the dorms. It ended up being quite the international dinner party with about ten American girls, three Russian guys, a Frenchman, an Italian and a German. At one point on the right side of the room three Russians, the German, and two Americans were speaking in Russia, on the left side of the room Emma and the French guy were speaking in French, and the middle section was going strong in English. Oh, globalization. The most flattering moment of this evening though was when the Italian guy asked me how long I had been studying Russian. I told him two years and a summer (he's only been studying for four/five months) and he says, "Oh, so you're fluent!" I wish.
So that was Monday, ending with me and Emma making it to the metro before it closed and me coming home late enough to be hungry for second dinner (soup and candied apples kind of like those red pears that Nunni makes) prepared by Olga.
And today? Well, the usual. Grammar class (damn, I don't remember any good quotes from today. Ludmila Petrovna was off her game) followed by the class for practicing artists that I occassionally audit. But then tonight........... !!!!!!!
I went to the Mariinsky Theatre (second time in four days, Lauren and I recognized the coat room lady and the guy selling snacks. they're going to feel like close friends by the end of the week after I go back for a third time on Saturday night) and saw the opera..... CARMEN! Yes, Mom, yes! CARMEN. It was so long, oh my god, four and a half hours with intermissions, so long, I got home late once again, but it was so worth it. I don't know if any of you except Mom can fully appreciate how happy that opera made me -- it was like reliving my childhood, driving around in the car. It was so beautiful, the singers were fabulous, the orchestra was even better, the costumes were fashionable, etc, etc, etc, etc. Lauren and I just sat there glowing the whole time. Also, as they were singing in French and the subtitles on the little screen above the stage were in Russian (though I was proud of how well I could read those), it really caused me to listen to the music purely as music and I think I enjoyed it much more because of that. Mhm...
The one thing that continues to blow my mind every time I am at the Mariinsky is how different each time feels because each set and show is entirely different from the last one, and I just cannot comprehend how they have something like a dozen or more shows going at the same time and how every day they have to strike and re-set-up the set for that night's show. How the hell do the do that? But more importantly, where the hell do they keep all those costumes and sets and shit? That's insane. INSANE. Oh, the magic of theatre.
So clearly you can tell I am in a glorious mood and am going to go to bed humming away.
MONDAY was kind of bizarre as Mondays go because I took.... four buses? I never take the bus. What is this nonsense. The first one I took was from Nevsky (where I was running errands in the morning) to school. The second one was from school to the Church of the Spilled Blood. The third one was from Nevsky to the dorms. And the fourth one was from the dorms to the Primorskaya metro (it was dark and cold and Emma and I were tired, okay? don't judge), followed by the metro home. Yes, Monday was a banner day for St. Petersburg transportation.
But, you may wonder, what did I do in the periods of time when I was not feeling vaguely nauseated on a bus stuck in traffic, unable to read due to the certainty I would vomit? (this is why I hate buses, the metro is so much better). Well, let me tell you.
The school part was dull. I had my first RSL exam in conversation class. You don't want to know. It's boring.
But why was I tramping over to the Church of the Spilled Blood randomly at 3pm on a Monday afternoon? Oh, that's right, just to meet up with Meri's dear friend and buddy and suite mate and nonsense from Georgetown, MARY ORTON. Yes, eat your heart out. I think we can officially say we are friends after meeting up together in ST. PETERSBURG. Sure, Mary and I hung out when I visited Meri in DC last January and in the spring before I left, but this was slightly more extreme and therefore slightly more epic and awesome. Mary is currently studying abroad in Copenhagen (she said everyone is super friendly and speaks English better than she does.... places like that exist??) and is on a fall break trip with her group in Russia. And.... ahh!!! We met up! It was so exciting. Look, we even got photographic evidence:
I also got to meet other American students who are studying in St. Petersburg for the semester or the year thanks to Mary. Mary's friend Tim from Georgetown is studying here for the semester with a different program from mine, and he also met us at the Church of the Spilled Blood along with four of his friends from his program. It was kind of funny to be hanging out with a big group of Americans all who had nothing to do with my program, some of whom don't speak Russian, while wandering through the market behind the Church of the Spilled Blood. I'll chalk it off as surreal experience number 8346236823 in Russia.
We then ended up settling at a well known ex-pat bar in the area and having a beer and sharing studying abroad stories. The contrast between studying in Copenhagen vs. studying in St. Petersburg is insane. It was nice to do that thing though with the other Americans where you share absurd stories about ridiculous things that have happened to you while living your daily life in the city ("You almost had your arm broken by a babushka shoving you on the metro too??"). Makes you feel more sane.
What was quite convenient though was the bar we settled at is called The Other Side, and it is the bar owned by that expat New Yorker Doug who I met through Cool! English when recording a couple weeks ago. Well last Wednesday I recorded again for Cool! English and Doug was once again there and told me that on Monday night the 20th his bar would be having an event where a rep from the U.S. Consulate would be there who could accept already filled out absentee ballots and issue emergency ballots if yours had not come yet. Well, as my absentee ballot is currently lost somewhere trans-atlantic, the skinny guy in the suit with the yellow tie and the blue shirt (how American!) gave me an emergency ballot which I filled out with some difficulty (the envelopes are so complicated! what the hell!) but can now proudly say that I voted in my first presidental election while sipping Russian beer in a bar full of expats. And who did I vote for? Sorry, Puppy, your liberal granddaughter is at it again. Remember, kids, Barack Obama has a "c" in his name. That was close. But very satisfying. And when I came home and proudly told Olga, Misha and Katya that I voted today, they were impressed. "Maladetst! (good job)," said Olga. "Oh, you voted for the black guy," said Katya.
Other Smolny kids met up with me at The Other Side to vote/turn in ballots as well, and then Lauren, Emma and I headed off to TACO NIGHT (hosted by Ilana Tabby) at the dorm. Yes. Unfortunately all of Ilana's homemade guacamole was gone by the time we got there, but her homemade salsa was amazing (who knew they had ingredients for such things in Russia?) and we got to meet some of the friends they are making in the dorms. It ended up being quite the international dinner party with about ten American girls, three Russian guys, a Frenchman, an Italian and a German. At one point on the right side of the room three Russians, the German, and two Americans were speaking in Russia, on the left side of the room Emma and the French guy were speaking in French, and the middle section was going strong in English. Oh, globalization. The most flattering moment of this evening though was when the Italian guy asked me how long I had been studying Russian. I told him two years and a summer (he's only been studying for four/five months) and he says, "Oh, so you're fluent!" I wish.
So that was Monday, ending with me and Emma making it to the metro before it closed and me coming home late enough to be hungry for second dinner (soup and candied apples kind of like those red pears that Nunni makes) prepared by Olga.
And today? Well, the usual. Grammar class (damn, I don't remember any good quotes from today. Ludmila Petrovna was off her game) followed by the class for practicing artists that I occassionally audit. But then tonight........... !!!!!!!
I went to the Mariinsky Theatre (second time in four days, Lauren and I recognized the coat room lady and the guy selling snacks. they're going to feel like close friends by the end of the week after I go back for a third time on Saturday night) and saw the opera..... CARMEN! Yes, Mom, yes! CARMEN. It was so long, oh my god, four and a half hours with intermissions, so long, I got home late once again, but it was so worth it. I don't know if any of you except Mom can fully appreciate how happy that opera made me -- it was like reliving my childhood, driving around in the car. It was so beautiful, the singers were fabulous, the orchestra was even better, the costumes were fashionable, etc, etc, etc, etc. Lauren and I just sat there glowing the whole time. Also, as they were singing in French and the subtitles on the little screen above the stage were in Russian (though I was proud of how well I could read those), it really caused me to listen to the music purely as music and I think I enjoyed it much more because of that. Mhm...
The one thing that continues to blow my mind every time I am at the Mariinsky is how different each time feels because each set and show is entirely different from the last one, and I just cannot comprehend how they have something like a dozen or more shows going at the same time and how every day they have to strike and re-set-up the set for that night's show. How the hell do the do that? But more importantly, where the hell do they keep all those costumes and sets and shit? That's insane. INSANE. Oh, the magic of theatre.
So clearly you can tell I am in a glorious mood and am going to go to bed humming away.
Monday, October 20, 2008
More updates on everyone's favorite prime minister.
Janna drew my attention to these two articles I thought I'd share with the group:
1. from FOXNews.com:
Oct. 17, 2008 -- Russia's satellite navigation system isn't fully operational yet, but it seems to work on Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's dog.
1. from FOXNews.com:
Russia's Vladimir Putin Given Rare Baby Tiger for 56th Birthday
MOSCOW — There's no doubt what Vladimir Putin's favorite birthday present is this year — a rare Ussuri tiger cub.
State television showed the Russian prime minister affectionately petting the two-month-old female cub on Friday. The tiger weighs only about 20 pounds and sleeps in a wicker basket at Putin's residence outside Moscow.
Putin says a good home will be found for the tiger, presumably in a zoo or wildlife preserve. He hasn't decided what to call her, but is leaning toward Mashenka or Milashka.
Putin refuses to say who gave him the cub for his 56th birthday, which was Tuesday.
The Ussuri tiger is also known as the Siberian, Amur or Manchurian tiger. Fewer than 400 are believed to survive in the wild.
Putin's Dog Gets Satellite-Guided Tracking Collar
Doesn't Lie in Puddles | Video: Discovery Animals
Putin listened Friday as his deputy, Sergei Ivanov, briefed him on the progress of the Global Navigation Satellite System. Then footage broadcast on Russian TV showed them try a collar containing satellite-guided positioning equipment on the prime minister's black Labrador Koni.
Ivanov said that the equipment goes on a standby mode wh
en "the dog doesn't move, if it, say, lies down in a puddle."
Putin interrupted him jokingly: "My dog isn't a piglet, it doesn't lie in puddles."
"She wags her tail, she likes it," Putin said after watching Koni outside his collonaded residence on Moscow's western outskirts.
The navigation system, which goes by acronym GLONASS, was developed during the Soviet era as a response to the U.S. Global Positioning System, but it has been slow to take shape amid the post-Soviet economic meltdown.
The government had promised to make the system fully operational by the beginning of this year, but it was delayed by equipment flaws and other technical problems.
Ivanov told Putin that the system would have 21 satellites by the year's end -- enough to provide navigation services over the entire Russian territory.
Ivanov said it would be available worldwide by the end of 2009, for which it would need to have 24 satellites.
This all just leaves me wondering --- how do the black lab and the tiger cub get along?
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Пятница, суббота, воскресенье......
ПЯТНИЦА 10/17/08:
1. Fridays kind of suck. Three classes feel so long on Fridays. Especially until 8 o'clock at night.
2. Lauren and I tried another picnic attempt. We were actually successful despite the overcast nonsense that was the weather -- it only started to rain right when I had to go to class anyway, so that was good. Also, we had really delicious baklava from the market near school. I've been telling everyone I know about this baklava (which I keep referring to as baklazhon by accident.... which is eggplant in Russian.... oops).
3. Hung out with Ilana and her dad on Friday night for one last hurray before he left on Saturday (left WITH your Fulbright letter, Sasha! which he will mail on Monday!). There may or may not have been some dancing involved. Don't worry, Dad, Mr. Tabby has nothing on your dance moves though.
4. A very happy birthday needs to be wished to the now 21 year old ERIK PETERSON (happy birthday! I don't think you ever read this but whatever!). Don't drink too much... more....
СУББОТА 10/18/08:
1. All day printmaking. Well, "all day" = two hours longer than usual. It was supposed to run 10am - 6pm, but Yuri had a gallery opening to go to and Cathy and I were going to the ballet so we actually got out a little after 4pm instead. Five out of six students were there this time and Yuri was our professor and so we did monotypes again but this time using colors and I loved it. It was so much fun -- Puppy, the monotype I did was an attempt to replicate the photo you sent me of yourself (Yuri wanted to know what an "assessor" was) but with the bold, designer-esque colors it ended up looking more like a political cartoon that would be out of the New Yorker.... and you look slightly like Bill Clinton. Oops. I hope your Republican sensibilities are not offended.
The print on the left was made by none other than friend and colleague Lauren "Isn't it great when you go to grab a rag for your work and you realize you're holding a pair of their old underwear??" Abman whose blog you can check out at at samizdat.
2. Cathy and I left printmaking to change out of our grungy art clothes in a bathroom at Чайная Ложка after eating dinner there and continued on to the theatre with Maneka & co. The ballet we saw with the group was "Золушка" (Cinderella) at the Marinsky Theatre. As Elena said, "I thought it would be a bit more classical in style...." but I didn't care. I really, really enjoyed it. As Ilana can tell you, it's a new production that was created in 2002 and so they do some funny things like incorporate modern dance moves into some of the more traditional dances (think: John Travolta, stayin' alive and pulp fiction) and the costumes were modern (Cinderella's "rags" involved pink leg warmers) and the set involved met staircases and cages (Nieves would have loved it). But it was still really beautiful (but also funny) and the last scene was just gorgeous. I thoroughly enjoyed all two hours and fifty minutes of it.
3. And afterwards there was so brief, as usual, chaos and miscommunication involving everyone in the group wanting to hang out together but this never being possible because there are too many people, so a group of us broke off and went to the Irish pub across the street from the Marinsky and had...... quesadillas?? That were.... amazing?! Insane. And we called it a night because we were all tired but on the walk back to the metro I learned some trivia about the St. Petersburg Zoo from the Johns:
a. there are the most polar bears bred in captivity here than any other zoo in the world.
b. the first elephant kept at the zoo died of alcohol poisoning because its keepers were worried about it getting cold in the winter so they fed it a liter of vodka every day and in the spring its liver failed.
c. the first bomb dropped in St. Petersburg in WWII killed an elephant in the zoo.
ВОСКРЕСЕРЬЕ 10/19/08:
1. Today I promised to help Carrie with her photography class homework which is to take 15 portraits. Whenever anyone asks me to be a subject for their photo homework I already feel compelled to return the favor as I exploit so many people all the time in my photographs. We went to the monastery at the Aleksandr Nevsky Lavra but the weather was kind of bad so we didn't get to check out all the famous graves and such because the rain go too heavy. But we ate lunch and then walked all the way back up Nevsky to Ploshad Vosstaniya and took pictures in dvors of interesting graffiti and nonsense. So that was fun, and then we had a little tea party at my house to warm up before Carrie went home and I started homework and nonsense.
2. Another very happy birthday needs to be wished to another now 21 year old who I know DOES read this blog, so hers is going to be a little fancier.... HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JANNA MARIEL HERMAN! (how much does it suck to turn 21 in a country where you can already drink?? can't wait for my turn!)
3. Also, I've realized very recently that the fall people have now been here for eight weeks.... as long as the summer people were here.... that really feels strange to me because it definitely does not feel as though it has been as long between end of August and end of October as it was between middle of June to middle of August. Really weird. And in some ways I still feel more connected to the summer people because we bonded over so much nonsense. Though I do have good friends now. So...... weird.
1. Fridays kind of suck. Three classes feel so long on Fridays. Especially until 8 o'clock at night.
2. Lauren and I tried another picnic attempt. We were actually successful despite the overcast nonsense that was the weather -- it only started to rain right when I had to go to class anyway, so that was good. Also, we had really delicious baklava from the market near school. I've been telling everyone I know about this baklava (which I keep referring to as baklazhon by accident.... which is eggplant in Russian.... oops).
3. Hung out with Ilana and her dad on Friday night for one last hurray before he left on Saturday (left WITH your Fulbright letter, Sasha! which he will mail on Monday!). There may or may not have been some dancing involved. Don't worry, Dad, Mr. Tabby has nothing on your dance moves though.
4. A very happy birthday needs to be wished to the now 21 year old ERIK PETERSON (happy birthday! I don't think you ever read this but whatever!). Don't drink too much... more....
СУББОТА 10/18/08:
1. All day printmaking. Well, "all day" = two hours longer than usual. It was supposed to run 10am - 6pm, but Yuri had a gallery opening to go to and Cathy and I were going to the ballet so we actually got out a little after 4pm instead. Five out of six students were there this time and Yuri was our professor and so we did monotypes again but this time using colors and I loved it. It was so much fun -- Puppy, the monotype I did was an attempt to replicate the photo you sent me of yourself (Yuri wanted to know what an "assessor" was) but with the bold, designer-esque colors it ended up looking more like a political cartoon that would be out of the New Yorker.... and you look slightly like Bill Clinton. Oops. I hope your Republican sensibilities are not offended.
The print on the left was made by none other than friend and colleague Lauren "Isn't it great when you go to grab a rag for your work and you realize you're holding a pair of their old underwear??" Abman whose blog you can check out at at samizdat.2. Cathy and I left printmaking to change out of our grungy art clothes in a bathroom at Чайная Ложка after eating dinner there and continued on to the theatre with Maneka & co. The ballet we saw with the group was "Золушка" (Cinderella) at the Marinsky Theatre. As Elena said, "I thought it would be a bit more classical in style...." but I didn't care. I really, really enjoyed it. As Ilana can tell you, it's a new production that was created in 2002 and so they do some funny things like incorporate modern dance moves into some of the more traditional dances (think: John Travolta, stayin' alive and pulp fiction) and the costumes were modern (Cinderella's "rags" involved pink leg warmers) and the set involved met staircases and cages (Nieves would have loved it). But it was still really beautiful (but also funny) and the last scene was just gorgeous. I thoroughly enjoyed all two hours and fifty minutes of it.
3. And afterwards there was so brief, as usual, chaos and miscommunication involving everyone in the group wanting to hang out together but this never being possible because there are too many people, so a group of us broke off and went to the Irish pub across the street from the Marinsky and had...... quesadillas?? That were.... amazing?! Insane. And we called it a night because we were all tired but on the walk back to the metro I learned some trivia about the St. Petersburg Zoo from the Johns:
a. there are the most polar bears bred in captivity here than any other zoo in the world.
b. the first elephant kept at the zoo died of alcohol poisoning because its keepers were worried about it getting cold in the winter so they fed it a liter of vodka every day and in the spring its liver failed.
c. the first bomb dropped in St. Petersburg in WWII killed an elephant in the zoo.
ВОСКРЕСЕРЬЕ 10/19/08:
1. Today I promised to help Carrie with her photography class homework which is to take 15 portraits. Whenever anyone asks me to be a subject for their photo homework I already feel compelled to return the favor as I exploit so many people all the time in my photographs. We went to the monastery at the Aleksandr Nevsky Lavra but the weather was kind of bad so we didn't get to check out all the famous graves and such because the rain go too heavy. But we ate lunch and then walked all the way back up Nevsky to Ploshad Vosstaniya and took pictures in dvors of interesting graffiti and nonsense. So that was fun, and then we had a little tea party at my house to warm up before Carrie went home and I started homework and nonsense.
2. Another very happy birthday needs to be wished to another now 21 year old who I know DOES read this blog, so hers is going to be a little fancier.... HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JANNA MARIEL HERMAN! (how much does it suck to turn 21 in a country where you can already drink?? can't wait for my turn!)
3. Also, I've realized very recently that the fall people have now been here for eight weeks.... as long as the summer people were here.... that really feels strange to me because it definitely does not feel as though it has been as long between end of August and end of October as it was between middle of June to middle of August. Really weird. And in some ways I still feel more connected to the summer people because we bonded over so much nonsense. Though I do have good friends now. So...... weird.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
I saw a dead cat today.
While walking from the Sportivnaya metro station to the Pushkin House. Not the best part of my day, but one of the more memorable moments. It was orange and white and lying on its side in the grass, very very wet from the rain.
More weird little museums today with Pro Arte exhibits. This week's my last chance as all the exhibits will be taken down after Sunday. So I crammed in three today before my film class.
FIRST: The Museum of Metrology near the Technologichesky Institute metro stop. This is a really odd museum as it is located inside the institute of metrology, and so you go into a security building place and need to ask to go to the museum, and naturally, of course, this went horribly wrong as I thought I had read something about it saying I needed an appointment to see the museum and the woman at the desk taking this to mean I didn't speak Russian, etc, etc. I had to wait fifteen minutes for the woman who works at the exam to come to the front desk to escort me to the museum and give me a semi-tour in English that was at about the same level as my Russian. And then there was miscommunication involving the fact that they thought I'd only studied Russian for one year and so were especially sympathetic and gave me a brochure in Russian and in English "to practice." Oy. But the museum was interesting. Once again it's one of those weird little small museums located in the old apartment of someone famous -- in this case, Mendeleev -- and it's three tiny rooms full of dusty old thermometers and such. But the Pro Arte exhibit was kind of cool. It was series of photographs taken by a St. Petersburg artist of the cement walls around the city that border the rivers so they looked like landscapes.
SECOND: I tried, once again, to go to the Pushkin House of Literature, but there was yet another conference there. I asked the woman when the conference would be over and she said, "I don't know! There are conferences every day! See, there are the people going into the conference!" So, I guess I won't get to see the Pro Arte exhibit there which was photographs by Mikki Smith, the only exhibit I actually really, really wanted to see..... but she's American so I'll probably have another chance. One day. Somewhere.
THIRD: And this time when I went to the Soil Science Museum, the door was not only unlocked but propped open. The Pro Arte exhibit there -- by another St. Petersburg artist -- didn't really grab my attention, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the soil science itself. No, really. They had these long strips of dirt samples from Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Poland -- all were different colors and varied by insane amounts. They also had a display of weird objects they've found while collecting samples -- bits of pottery, old coins, a doll's head -- and those Cow Parade cows (??? didn't get that part) and all these different dioramas, my favorite being one that showed samples of grass growing in the dirt, but in the dirt part below they set it up so it was the tunnel homes of mice.... but full of dollhouse furniture and mice doing human-like activities. Creepy and weird, and once again in a building much too old and interesting for such a quirky small museum. Sasha, you would have loved it.
And then film class tonight. Which is always great. Tonight we were talking about Evgeny Onegin by Pushkin and watched the British adaptation -- Onegin -- with Liv Tyler and Ralph Finnes. The best part was when our professor actually talked about the mTV show Room Raiders in comparison to how "Tatyana looking around in Evgeny's study is like the people in the show looking through each other's stuff and trying to figure out if they want to date the other one!" He also recited the first stanza of Evgeny Onegin by heart -- all Russian high schoolers have to memorize it apparently -- and it was great. It also ran over by about 45 minutes, but that is the one class I don't mind running over. Besides, we don't even have it next week -- we each just have a 20 minute conference about our papers.
Another busy weekend is coming up. I am busy literally all day tomorrow (11am - 8pm) and Saturday (10am - 10pm). Oy.
More weird little museums today with Pro Arte exhibits. This week's my last chance as all the exhibits will be taken down after Sunday. So I crammed in three today before my film class.
FIRST: The Museum of Metrology near the Technologichesky Institute metro stop. This is a really odd museum as it is located inside the institute of metrology, and so you go into a security building place and need to ask to go to the museum, and naturally, of course, this went horribly wrong as I thought I had read something about it saying I needed an appointment to see the museum and the woman at the desk taking this to mean I didn't speak Russian, etc, etc. I had to wait fifteen minutes for the woman who works at the exam to come to the front desk to escort me to the museum and give me a semi-tour in English that was at about the same level as my Russian. And then there was miscommunication involving the fact that they thought I'd only studied Russian for one year and so were especially sympathetic and gave me a brochure in Russian and in English "to practice." Oy. But the museum was interesting. Once again it's one of those weird little small museums located in the old apartment of someone famous -- in this case, Mendeleev -- and it's three tiny rooms full of dusty old thermometers and such. But the Pro Arte exhibit was kind of cool. It was series of photographs taken by a St. Petersburg artist of the cement walls around the city that border the rivers so they looked like landscapes.
SECOND: I tried, once again, to go to the Pushkin House of Literature, but there was yet another conference there. I asked the woman when the conference would be over and she said, "I don't know! There are conferences every day! See, there are the people going into the conference!" So, I guess I won't get to see the Pro Arte exhibit there which was photographs by Mikki Smith, the only exhibit I actually really, really wanted to see..... but she's American so I'll probably have another chance. One day. Somewhere.
THIRD: And this time when I went to the Soil Science Museum, the door was not only unlocked but propped open. The Pro Arte exhibit there -- by another St. Petersburg artist -- didn't really grab my attention, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the soil science itself. No, really. They had these long strips of dirt samples from Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Poland -- all were different colors and varied by insane amounts. They also had a display of weird objects they've found while collecting samples -- bits of pottery, old coins, a doll's head -- and those Cow Parade cows (??? didn't get that part) and all these different dioramas, my favorite being one that showed samples of grass growing in the dirt, but in the dirt part below they set it up so it was the tunnel homes of mice.... but full of dollhouse furniture and mice doing human-like activities. Creepy and weird, and once again in a building much too old and interesting for such a quirky small museum. Sasha, you would have loved it.
And then film class tonight. Which is always great. Tonight we were talking about Evgeny Onegin by Pushkin and watched the British adaptation -- Onegin -- with Liv Tyler and Ralph Finnes. The best part was when our professor actually talked about the mTV show Room Raiders in comparison to how "Tatyana looking around in Evgeny's study is like the people in the show looking through each other's stuff and trying to figure out if they want to date the other one!" He also recited the first stanza of Evgeny Onegin by heart -- all Russian high schoolers have to memorize it apparently -- and it was great. It also ran over by about 45 minutes, but that is the one class I don't mind running over. Besides, we don't even have it next week -- we each just have a 20 minute conference about our papers.
Another busy weekend is coming up. I am busy literally all day tomorrow (11am - 8pm) and Saturday (10am - 10pm). Oy.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Some important items from yesterday:
1. Last night I met Ilana's dad! He's here visiting for the week and seems to be a cool guy. Ilana already took him to Fidel. Crazy.
2. Yesterday Bryan sent out an email saying that in less than a month we have to let him know where we are planning on living second semester -- staying with our families or in the dorms or renting an apartment or what. Then when I came home last night, Olga out of the blue asks me where I plan on living next semester. I asked her if Elena had called today or something because it seemed so odd that it should come up twice separately, but Olga said no, she and Misha simply had been discussing it the night before and were wondering my plans. So on the spot I made my final decision, feeling that this coincidence was a sign, and said that if they'd keep me I'd love to stay and Olga said they'd have me and it works out well that I am here the year she won't be working because of her leg because otherwise she'd probably be working too much and we'd have less time to chat in Russian and drink tea and she'd be too busy.
3. Ludmilia Petrovna quote of the week: "Girls! Dative case! I'm dying!"
4. And last, most importantly, news on the home front: poor little Gwenny has Lyme disease. I guess it takes 3 - 6 months for symptoms to show in dogs, so she probably was bitten by the tick over the summer or spring, but with all these new babies and strained backs, Mom just noticed how sick the little pup is. But now she's on medication and will be fine, I know you were all quite worried there for a moment. Send get well cards to the house in Lexington.
2. Yesterday Bryan sent out an email saying that in less than a month we have to let him know where we are planning on living second semester -- staying with our families or in the dorms or renting an apartment or what. Then when I came home last night, Olga out of the blue asks me where I plan on living next semester. I asked her if Elena had called today or something because it seemed so odd that it should come up twice separately, but Olga said no, she and Misha simply had been discussing it the night before and were wondering my plans. So on the spot I made my final decision, feeling that this coincidence was a sign, and said that if they'd keep me I'd love to stay and Olga said they'd have me and it works out well that I am here the year she won't be working because of her leg because otherwise she'd probably be working too much and we'd have less time to chat in Russian and drink tea and she'd be too busy.
3. Ludmilia Petrovna quote of the week: "Girls! Dative case! I'm dying!"
4. And last, most importantly, news on the home front: poor little Gwenny has Lyme disease. I guess it takes 3 - 6 months for symptoms to show in dogs, so she probably was bitten by the tick over the summer or spring, but with all these new babies and strained backs, Mom just noticed how sick the little pup is. But now she's on medication and will be fine, I know you were all quite worried there for a moment. Send get well cards to the house in Lexington.
Monday, October 13, 2008
WAIT, HOLD ON:
Something way more eventful just happened!
The RUSSIAN (yes, not dubbed, actually Russian) film version of "10 Little Indians" (naturally, of course, going by the older and more racist title, "Десять негритят") just came on TV!
This is insane!
It's the Russian version of last fall! What is my life?!
Here's the Wikipedia page in Russian and in English.
"Что такое Mr. Owen??"
The RUSSIAN (yes, not dubbed, actually Russian) film version of "10 Little Indians" (naturally, of course, going by the older and more racist title, "Десять негритят") just came on TV!
This is insane!
It's the Russian version of last fall! What is my life?!
Here's the Wikipedia page in Russian and in English.
"Что такое Mr. Owen??"
Lights out, shoot up the station, tv's dead, where's there to run...
We had a power outage this evening.
In the first five minutes I was home, I took my self portrait, changed my wet socks and pants (I got caught in the rain -- the ONE DAY I forget my umbrella) and I had just gone back into the kitchen to make tea and the power went out.
Well, and then less than five minutes later it went back on.
So it was fairly uneventful.
But the most eventful part of today.
Anyway, aren't you glad the power came back on so I could put up photos?
We have for your entertainment....
1. first roll of film shot with the Kiev (one more of Lauren coming, I still need to print it).
2. caught up on self portraits from the past week.
3. and the beginnings of the weekend in Pskov.
In the first five minutes I was home, I took my self portrait, changed my wet socks and pants (I got caught in the rain -- the ONE DAY I forget my umbrella) and I had just gone back into the kitchen to make tea and the power went out.
Well, and then less than five minutes later it went back on.
So it was fairly uneventful.
But the most eventful part of today.
Anyway, aren't you glad the power came back on so I could put up photos?
We have for your entertainment....
1. first roll of film shot with the Kiev (one more of Lauren coming, I still need to print it).
2. caught up on self portraits from the past week.
3. and the beginnings of the weekend in Pskov.
Псков: The Return
"Almost exactly the same, just with different actors playing the supporting roles." -- The Very Old and Therefore Very Wise Emma Dorst.
Once again we met at 7:40 in the morning in front of the statue of Lenin at the Moskovskaya metro stop. But this time it was as dark as it was coming home the night before at 9pm after film class. It was also different as Bryan and Elena came with us this time and they are more about actually leaving on time than tour guide Olga was this summer -- so Vicky and Lauren had a little issue finding the right meeting place (not Mayakovskaya, not Moskovsky Vorod, Moskovskaya) and they literally had to jump on the bus as it was driving away. That was a little stressful.
The ride there though wasn't any different. Reading, sleeping, looking out the window. We even stopped at the same rest stop though since we were there in July they built a whole other building (???). As Eric pointed out, "They didn't build it. They probably just rolled it in on a trailer." Yup.
We even picked up the same tour guide -- though Emma, Amanda and I suffered some confusion about whether she was the lady we had in Novgorod or if she was the one from Pskov, but either way, we definitely had her before. We stayed in a different hotel though -- much swankier than last time. Marianna and I (also, roommates were assigned this time but I lucked out and was with Marianna, one of the tutors this summer who was invited back on the trip as a guest) had a two room suite with a whole couch living room area. Lunch was also different.... we didn't eat in the hotel but in a strange little restaurant-by-day-club-by-night place called "Mon Paris." Odd as we were in.... Pskov, Russia....
Not to worry though, our walking tour of the Kremlin and such was identical. I even tried to take a lot of the same pictures as last time so I can do side-by-side season comparisons (Emma and I are even talking about going back after it snows so we can see Pskov in all the seasons). The nice thing about doing the same exact tour again was that this summer I really understood maybe 10% of what our guide told us about the city, and now I can see the difference in my comprehension skillzzz at least because I understood much more (maybe 12%?? no, just kidding). Though, as Emma said, "This was boring when I didn't understand it and it's boring when I do." So Emma, Amanda and I (Ilana wasn't with us this weekend -- her dad is visiting) plus all of the Russian tutors/students (for many this was their 3rd to 100th time to Pskov) may or may not have chatted through a lot of the tour and wandered off and photographed things instead.
One big difference I did notice on our walking tour though was that they removed almost all of those cool locks on the fence by the little chapel that I took so many photographs of last time. I guess they have to or the fence would get so heavy it would fall into the river, and I had noticed before that all of the locks were from weddings in 2007 or 2008, but still it was kind of sad. Also funny though to picture one of the babushkii who sweep the streets in the morning with their straw brooms wielding a giant metal-breaking lock cutter and cursing about all the stupid young people who had to go and get married this year.
The weather was also worse than this summer, but actually, if I remember correctly, it was kind of rainy on Saturday and then beautiful on Sunday last time, which is how the weather worked this weekend.
I didn't nap at the hotel like last time during our free time after the tour -- I actually saw the city center of Pskov and walked along the old city walls and through some parks with Lauren, Maneka, Eric, Amanda and Emma. We also fooled around in this children's amusement park (I think I saw pictures of Carly and Katie on the same teeter-totter on Facebook) that looked like something out of a horror movie and had tea and chocolate at a cafe.
Thank god though that dinner was at the same, yes, fishbowl of a restaurant in a mall -- EUROPARK CAFÉ. YES. Sasha!! Adams!! Grace!! Jonah!! I went back to Pskov before our 2013 reunion in Christmas sweaters if we're still all single (long story). It was so funny being back there, but oddly sad without all of you guys. What a shame.
Our plans for the evening even ended up being identical though, I guess there isn't that much to do in Pskov so that's not really a surprise. The hanging out in the hotel was much more of a party this time than just "tell us about your favorite worst moment" talking, followed by a brief outing to good ol' R-16 (once again, we did not stay that long and there was a significantly more expensive cover charge this time which was lame), and even (SASHA!!!) a late night trip to the produkti with Lauren where we bought pretzel sticks and cheese, just like last time (I was very insistant on this point and Lauren was puzzled but went along with it).
Then, get this, we got to have a second meal at weird Europark Café. I know, jealous, right? Followed by the same route of sightseeing as last time -- abandoned in a field, walking along the view and the springs, fortress thingy, monastery. I really liked walking through all those fields again and seeing that beautiful view now all yellow and orange; I even tried to get Lauren to take the same photo of me as Sasha took last time (the one that's my profile picture on here).
When we went back to the monastery I didn't actually go back in, but instead hung around outside it with Liza, Emma and Maneka. We were all kind of in a strange mood though and happened to be standing next to this man (same guy as last time, I remember because I noticed he has the same Nikon D80 as I do) who sells framed photographs of the monastery. The thing was though that among all these photos of flowers and gates and towers and gardens was one framed photo of a black cat face. There was something so ridiculous about it that we couldn't stop laughing over it -- the cat looks so pissed and vaguely crosseyed and the image is of a shitty quality and kind of soft focus and it is so unnecessarily large (11" x 14" or so) and it was just so random in the middle of all this that we couldn't stop laughing over it and Maneka decided to buy it for her sister who "has a history of weird cat presents." But we were laughing so hard over it that it took us a half an hour for one of us to calm down enough (I was elected) to ask how much it was (150 rubles, a total steal in our minds) and then actually buy it. I then began a photo project which Eric accurately named "When the Cat's Let out of the Bag...." where I photographed everyone's reactions to Maneka showing them her purchase. Here's a preview of coming attractions:
This was all followed by the same exact lunch at Café Lilia -- no, really, we even did the same stupid thing where we all got on the bus to drive exactly two minutes down the street to all get off again. The waiters were the same guys, of course, serving the same food on the same dishes with little cartoon pictures of fruit on them and, also, lunch dissolved into the same hysterics as last time (Emma and I were recalling Sasha's outburst of laughter after Jonah's reply to my inquery regarding the number of vegetables in the world: "Individuals or species?"). I think we were all still wound up over the cat picture, but everyone just lost it. As Emma says, we were "corpsing." (POLL: has anyone else actually heard or used the "scientific" term that Emma "supposedly heard on NPR" which is when someone is laughing so hard that they can't control it and it is called "corpsing".... no? Thought so.)
And then we all got back on the bus and somehow got stuck in the same traffic and got back at the same late hour even though fewer people, supposedly, are going to their dachas now.
And then I fell asleep.
And now I am getting ready to go to class.
So. That was my weekend. I took 471 photos or something like that, so I'll be sorting through those sometime this week.
Once again we met at 7:40 in the morning in front of the statue of Lenin at the Moskovskaya metro stop. But this time it was as dark as it was coming home the night before at 9pm after film class. It was also different as Bryan and Elena came with us this time and they are more about actually leaving on time than tour guide Olga was this summer -- so Vicky and Lauren had a little issue finding the right meeting place (not Mayakovskaya, not Moskovsky Vorod, Moskovskaya) and they literally had to jump on the bus as it was driving away. That was a little stressful.
The ride there though wasn't any different. Reading, sleeping, looking out the window. We even stopped at the same rest stop though since we were there in July they built a whole other building (???). As Eric pointed out, "They didn't build it. They probably just rolled it in on a trailer." Yup.
We even picked up the same tour guide -- though Emma, Amanda and I suffered some confusion about whether she was the lady we had in Novgorod or if she was the one from Pskov, but either way, we definitely had her before. We stayed in a different hotel though -- much swankier than last time. Marianna and I (also, roommates were assigned this time but I lucked out and was with Marianna, one of the tutors this summer who was invited back on the trip as a guest) had a two room suite with a whole couch living room area. Lunch was also different.... we didn't eat in the hotel but in a strange little restaurant-by-day-club-by-night place called "Mon Paris." Odd as we were in.... Pskov, Russia....
Not to worry though, our walking tour of the Kremlin and such was identical. I even tried to take a lot of the same pictures as last time so I can do side-by-side season comparisons (Emma and I are even talking about going back after it snows so we can see Pskov in all the seasons). The nice thing about doing the same exact tour again was that this summer I really understood maybe 10% of what our guide told us about the city, and now I can see the difference in my comprehension skillzzz at least because I understood much more (maybe 12%?? no, just kidding). Though, as Emma said, "This was boring when I didn't understand it and it's boring when I do." So Emma, Amanda and I (Ilana wasn't with us this weekend -- her dad is visiting) plus all of the Russian tutors/students (for many this was their 3rd to 100th time to Pskov) may or may not have chatted through a lot of the tour and wandered off and photographed things instead.
One big difference I did notice on our walking tour though was that they removed almost all of those cool locks on the fence by the little chapel that I took so many photographs of last time. I guess they have to or the fence would get so heavy it would fall into the river, and I had noticed before that all of the locks were from weddings in 2007 or 2008, but still it was kind of sad. Also funny though to picture one of the babushkii who sweep the streets in the morning with their straw brooms wielding a giant metal-breaking lock cutter and cursing about all the stupid young people who had to go and get married this year.
The weather was also worse than this summer, but actually, if I remember correctly, it was kind of rainy on Saturday and then beautiful on Sunday last time, which is how the weather worked this weekend.
I didn't nap at the hotel like last time during our free time after the tour -- I actually saw the city center of Pskov and walked along the old city walls and through some parks with Lauren, Maneka, Eric, Amanda and Emma. We also fooled around in this children's amusement park (I think I saw pictures of Carly and Katie on the same teeter-totter on Facebook) that looked like something out of a horror movie and had tea and chocolate at a cafe.
Thank god though that dinner was at the same, yes, fishbowl of a restaurant in a mall -- EUROPARK CAFÉ. YES. Sasha!! Adams!! Grace!! Jonah!! I went back to Pskov before our 2013 reunion in Christmas sweaters if we're still all single (long story). It was so funny being back there, but oddly sad without all of you guys. What a shame.
Our plans for the evening even ended up being identical though, I guess there isn't that much to do in Pskov so that's not really a surprise. The hanging out in the hotel was much more of a party this time than just "tell us about your favorite worst moment" talking, followed by a brief outing to good ol' R-16 (once again, we did not stay that long and there was a significantly more expensive cover charge this time which was lame), and even (SASHA!!!) a late night trip to the produkti with Lauren where we bought pretzel sticks and cheese, just like last time (I was very insistant on this point and Lauren was puzzled but went along with it).
Then, get this, we got to have a second meal at weird Europark Café. I know, jealous, right? Followed by the same route of sightseeing as last time -- abandoned in a field, walking along the view and the springs, fortress thingy, monastery. I really liked walking through all those fields again and seeing that beautiful view now all yellow and orange; I even tried to get Lauren to take the same photo of me as Sasha took last time (the one that's my profile picture on here).
When we went back to the monastery I didn't actually go back in, but instead hung around outside it with Liza, Emma and Maneka. We were all kind of in a strange mood though and happened to be standing next to this man (same guy as last time, I remember because I noticed he has the same Nikon D80 as I do) who sells framed photographs of the monastery. The thing was though that among all these photos of flowers and gates and towers and gardens was one framed photo of a black cat face. There was something so ridiculous about it that we couldn't stop laughing over it -- the cat looks so pissed and vaguely crosseyed and the image is of a shitty quality and kind of soft focus and it is so unnecessarily large (11" x 14" or so) and it was just so random in the middle of all this that we couldn't stop laughing over it and Maneka decided to buy it for her sister who "has a history of weird cat presents." But we were laughing so hard over it that it took us a half an hour for one of us to calm down enough (I was elected) to ask how much it was (150 rubles, a total steal in our minds) and then actually buy it. I then began a photo project which Eric accurately named "When the Cat's Let out of the Bag...." where I photographed everyone's reactions to Maneka showing them her purchase. Here's a preview of coming attractions:
This was all followed by the same exact lunch at Café Lilia -- no, really, we even did the same stupid thing where we all got on the bus to drive exactly two minutes down the street to all get off again. The waiters were the same guys, of course, serving the same food on the same dishes with little cartoon pictures of fruit on them and, also, lunch dissolved into the same hysterics as last time (Emma and I were recalling Sasha's outburst of laughter after Jonah's reply to my inquery regarding the number of vegetables in the world: "Individuals or species?"). I think we were all still wound up over the cat picture, but everyone just lost it. As Emma says, we were "corpsing." (POLL: has anyone else actually heard or used the "scientific" term that Emma "supposedly heard on NPR" which is when someone is laughing so hard that they can't control it and it is called "corpsing".... no? Thought so.)
And then we all got back on the bus and somehow got stuck in the same traffic and got back at the same late hour even though fewer people, supposedly, are going to their dachas now.
And then I fell asleep.
And now I am getting ready to go to class.
So. That was my weekend. I took 471 photos or something like that, so I'll be sorting through those sometime this week.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Advisor meeting while abroad.
That's right. Major advisor meeting while in Russia.
Well, not quite. We mostly just ate and talked about things completely not related to academics or Wellesley.
I told the Hodge clan to meet me on the bridge of the four horsemen at 1pm and they rolled up in a silver car exactly on time (how un-Russian of them), all three of them waving and smiling (also how un-Russian) at me through the windows. It was another one of those strange, surreal, wait, where am I again? am I in Wellesley, MA? moments. When I got in the car though, Professor Hodge said that I, on the other hand, looked quite Russian leaning against the railing of the bridge, reading ever-so-casually in my tweed blazer. Ha.
The car was driven by the Hodges' guide/man who is helping faciliate their adoption, Andrei, and the five of us parked and ate lunch at a Georgian restaurant not too far from the Georgian restaurant Erin D took me too back in the day back in.... June. Wow that feels long ago. The food was really good though. We all had the business lunch which was salad and soup and a main course plus some of PJ's khachapuri -- best thing in the world. I was so full that at 9pm after class I still wasn't really hungry but Olga fed me anyway.
Anyway, they all looked great and PJ was tired but talkative and told me about the projects he has to do because he is missing a week of school -- bringing in an object from Russia and explaining it to his 3rd grade class and daily journal writing. He only needs to do it for 20 minutes every other day but he is already on volume #2 and writes for 30 minutes every day. I knew I loved that kid.
It was great hearing about how well everything is going for them. The little girl is very sweet apparently and two and a half so she already has a personality and everything. Look at that jump start. This is the first of three trips they need to do though to complete the adoption, so they'll be back in December twice more before they can take their new daughter home. Hopefully I will see them again then. Also, as she is already speaking and speaking Russian, they are going to try to have her keep up her Russian, so when I babysit for them next year they are hoping I can read her Russian children's stories and such and we can chat. I also told them about our neighbors and their adopted children who are speaking Russian and thought maybe they should get in contact with them...... I am actually just writing this on here because I forgot to email Mom and Dad about this and am tired and know they will read this so they'll see this on here instead. Ha. So, yeah, maybe they should get in touch.
I walked with them for a bit after lunch while they did some errands and then we parted ways so they could go back to the orphanage to visit more with the girl and so I could get to Vasilevskii Ostrov for class. BUT, but, BUT -- not before we formed PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE OF THE EVENT:
There. I remembered this time!
Speaking of photographs, I picked up the first roll shot with the Kiev on my way to film class (ha, interesting, anyway) and, miracle of miracles, IT WORKS. Beautiful. I had a slight spacing issue in terms of I just didn't advance the film far enough initially before I started shooting and stopped shooting when I still had a chunk of film left. But the pictures look pretty good. Except for Ilana and Emma always going and closing their eyes, assholes. I'll "scan" them and get them up here eventually, though probably not until next week when I'll be sorting through all the photos I am bound to take this weekend in Pskov as well.
And then tonight in film class we finished watching Solaris, directed by Tarkovsky, not the one with George Clooney. I really liked it in its philosphical sci-fi way. I recommend it.
Anyhoo. Tomorrow is Friday, so you know that means a hellish amount of classes, followed by sleeping because I have to wake up obscenely early (read: 6am) on Saturday (ужас!) to get on a bus for six hours (кошмар!) to journey to Pskov. But it should be fun once I get there.
Moral of the story: Nunni, you might just have to wait until Sunday night (afternoon your time -- unless we get stuck in horribly horrendous traffic which is entirely possible though fewer people will be coming home from the dachas on Sunday afternoon now.... dacha traffic is the Petersburg answer to Cape traffic) at the earliest for another update.
Well, not quite. We mostly just ate and talked about things completely not related to academics or Wellesley.
I told the Hodge clan to meet me on the bridge of the four horsemen at 1pm and they rolled up in a silver car exactly on time (how un-Russian of them), all three of them waving and smiling (also how un-Russian) at me through the windows. It was another one of those strange, surreal, wait, where am I again? am I in Wellesley, MA? moments. When I got in the car though, Professor Hodge said that I, on the other hand, looked quite Russian leaning against the railing of the bridge, reading ever-so-casually in my tweed blazer. Ha.
The car was driven by the Hodges' guide/man who is helping faciliate their adoption, Andrei, and the five of us parked and ate lunch at a Georgian restaurant not too far from the Georgian restaurant Erin D took me too back in the day back in.... June. Wow that feels long ago. The food was really good though. We all had the business lunch which was salad and soup and a main course plus some of PJ's khachapuri -- best thing in the world. I was so full that at 9pm after class I still wasn't really hungry but Olga fed me anyway.
Anyway, they all looked great and PJ was tired but talkative and told me about the projects he has to do because he is missing a week of school -- bringing in an object from Russia and explaining it to his 3rd grade class and daily journal writing. He only needs to do it for 20 minutes every other day but he is already on volume #2 and writes for 30 minutes every day. I knew I loved that kid.
It was great hearing about how well everything is going for them. The little girl is very sweet apparently and two and a half so she already has a personality and everything. Look at that jump start. This is the first of three trips they need to do though to complete the adoption, so they'll be back in December twice more before they can take their new daughter home. Hopefully I will see them again then. Also, as she is already speaking and speaking Russian, they are going to try to have her keep up her Russian, so when I babysit for them next year they are hoping I can read her Russian children's stories and such and we can chat. I also told them about our neighbors and their adopted children who are speaking Russian and thought maybe they should get in contact with them...... I am actually just writing this on here because I forgot to email Mom and Dad about this and am tired and know they will read this so they'll see this on here instead. Ha. So, yeah, maybe they should get in touch.
I walked with them for a bit after lunch while they did some errands and then we parted ways so they could go back to the orphanage to visit more with the girl and so I could get to Vasilevskii Ostrov for class. BUT, but, BUT -- not before we formed PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE OF THE EVENT:
There. I remembered this time!
Speaking of photographs, I picked up the first roll shot with the Kiev on my way to film class (ha, interesting, anyway) and, miracle of miracles, IT WORKS. Beautiful. I had a slight spacing issue in terms of I just didn't advance the film far enough initially before I started shooting and stopped shooting when I still had a chunk of film left. But the pictures look pretty good. Except for Ilana and Emma always going and closing their eyes, assholes. I'll "scan" them and get them up here eventually, though probably not until next week when I'll be sorting through all the photos I am bound to take this weekend in Pskov as well.
And then tonight in film class we finished watching Solaris, directed by Tarkovsky, not the one with George Clooney. I really liked it in its philosphical sci-fi way. I recommend it.
Anyhoo. Tomorrow is Friday, so you know that means a hellish amount of classes, followed by sleeping because I have to wake up obscenely early (read: 6am) on Saturday (ужас!) to get on a bus for six hours (кошмар!) to journey to Pskov. But it should be fun once I get there.
Moral of the story: Nunni, you might just have to wait until Sunday night (afternoon your time -- unless we get stuck in horribly horrendous traffic which is entirely possible though fewer people will be coming home from the dachas on Sunday afternoon now.... dacha traffic is the Petersburg answer to Cape traffic) at the earliest for another update.
Update about lack of updates.
Dear readers and blog enthusiasts (a.k.a. NUNNI! hello!!!),
Sorry that I haven't been updating much recently..... honestly there hasn't been much to update about, just a lot of classes and homework and sitting outside on benches trying to enjoy the last of the sunshine and "warmth" before it becomes dark and cold forever.
I will have something exciting to update you all about later tonight though. As some of you may know, my major advisor and beloved professor, T.P. Hodge, his awesome and cool wife, Caroline, and their fantastic son (and my favorite babysitting gig) P.J. have been trying to adopt a little Russian girl for some time now and finally, finally, FINALLY things appear to be working out for them. So they are here for a week visiting a St. Petersburg orphanage and meeting the little girl who is going to become their daughter! And the best part is in two hours I am meeting them for lunch to catch up! All I can say is that this time I promise to remember to take a picture of all of us together enjoying a meal in St. Petersburg.
Sorry that I haven't been updating much recently..... honestly there hasn't been much to update about, just a lot of classes and homework and sitting outside on benches trying to enjoy the last of the sunshine and "warmth" before it becomes dark and cold forever.
I will have something exciting to update you all about later tonight though. As some of you may know, my major advisor and beloved professor, T.P. Hodge, his awesome and cool wife, Caroline, and their fantastic son (and my favorite babysitting gig) P.J. have been trying to adopt a little Russian girl for some time now and finally, finally, FINALLY things appear to be working out for them. So they are here for a week visiting a St. Petersburg orphanage and meeting the little girl who is going to become their daughter! And the best part is in two hours I am meeting them for lunch to catch up! All I can say is that this time I promise to remember to take a picture of all of us together enjoying a meal in St. Petersburg.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Людмила Петровна
LP: "Why are all Americans afraid of spiders? I quite like spiders, I think they're funny up on the wall hanging there. I like all animals. It's all the same to me."
EB: "What are Russians typically afraid of?"
LP: "Each other. No, really! And official paperwork. Also, women are usually scared of mice. And men are usually scared of women."
EB: "What are Russians typically afraid of?"
LP: "Each other. No, really! And official paperwork. Also, women are usually scared of mice. And men are usually scared of women."
Monday, October 6, 2008
Sunday, October 5, 2008
A weekend in complicated list form.
1. THURSDAY:
a. Before film class, I went to more museums featuring Pro Arte exhibits:
i. The Brodsky Apartment...
-- First off, did you know there was more than one famous Brodsky? This museum is the apartment of Isaak Brodsky, the Soviet painter, not Joseph Brodsky, the Russian poet.
-- Second, it was one of those typical, cramped, over-filled museums with a minimum of six (maximum of ten? twelve?) paintings on every wall.
-- The older women there were quite sweet and stood smiling and watching as I looked around the museum, though they may have charged me the foreigner entrance fee to the museum (100r when I think it was supposed to be 80r).
-- There was then an awkward language miscommunication when I asked about the Pro Arte exhibit which was an audio walking tour and they were like but you are a foreigner you don't speak Russian (given that at least 90% of this conversation was held in Russian) we don't have an English translation, sorry, and I was like no it's ok and they were like but we have no translation!!! And I finally gave up because it was by the same art group that did the Kolobok video in the Museum of Bread and I wasn't so into that so, whatever.
-- Best part of the museum was the sign demanding: "DON'T PHOTO!" I wanted to take a picture of it so badly....
ii. The Kirov Apartment...
-- Definitely wins for having the best museum babushki in the city. The woman at the kassa didn't charge me to get into the museum after showing her my student ID, and at one point they even put on a special Soviet cartoon on a TV just to show me.
-- Half the museum is set up like the apartment when Kirov lived there, complete with a polar bear skin rug.
-- There is also a large portrait of Kirov himself made entirely out of feathers (the man was really into hunting, apparently) with more full and realistic shading than I see in most drawings.
-- The Pro Arte exhibit there was really cool. It was a project involving old Soviet radios which are cool enough in themselves -- the artist photographed the radios and put the images on plastic panels encased in wooden boxes, lit from behind with a light bulb so they were glowing. The photographs on the boxes in one room were flat, straight-on portraits of the radios making the boxes themselves kind of look like radios, and the photographs on the boxes in another room were of the radios in various modern settings flying up in the air in pristine, photo-shopped-clean images. And then in the third room the actual radios were there on stands playing swanky, waltzy 50s Soviet music that gave the museum an entirely authentic and old-fashioned feel.
b. Something I noticed then when going home on the metro on Thursday night that didn't full sink in until Friday morning when it was confirmed:
i. The turned off the water in both of the fountains on the pedestrian street.
ii. They have dismantled and are taking away the pieces making up the beer garden (Adams! Ahh!) where we sat so often and people watched the metro this summer.
iii. Conclusion? Winter is coming. Olga even told me that there is a holiday on October 14th or 16th that is "Holiday of the First Snow." That is in about ten days.
c. Nabokov, love of my life, was the quote of the day on my iGoogle:
i. "My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music."
2. FRIDAY
a. Three classes on Friday make me so tired that I just went home after Bakhtin and sat in my pajamas and drank tea with Olga. Pretty wild start to the weekend.
b. Inbetween writing class and Bakhtin Lauren and I had our now-traditional picnic.
i. We decided we are going to keep this up for as long as possible, even persevering through snow.
ii. We ate: bread, sausage, cheese, carrot salad, chips, and a mini pie. I drank a multi-fruit juice box and Lauren had yogurt in a bottle.
3. SATURDAY
a. As you already know, printmaking was canceled.
b. Instead, I slept more and read in bed.
c. I also poked around in the consignment stores.
i. I may or may not have bought this really funky old Soviet guitar from the 80s (original price listed inside: 33r, I paid 500r [$20]) with pictures of Soviet beauty models decoupaged (spelling???) on the front and writing scrawled on the back such as "Москва 18.07.80".
ii. I am now going to (finally) learn how to play guitar.
d. Then there was a sports day in the park.
i. I sat and watched this time and shot a roll of film with the Kiev. We'll see how that comes out.
e. Followed by a group of us (BB, IT, LM, ED, JN, MK, EB) going to eat Chinese food.
i. Oh my god CHINESE FOOD. How I missed, thee.
ii. Chicken and peppers?? Fried rice?? What??
f. Followed by girliness in the dorm.
i. We kind of watched most of the black and white film Aleksandr Nevsky, though it dissolved into watching Notorious B.I.G. and Cassidy music videos on YouTube.
ii. Thanks to Maneka, my nailed were painted blue and pink with green stripes.
iii. Thanks to Ilana, my hair was french braided and is still fluffy from the experience.
4. SUNDAY
a. I was in Pavlovsk. All day.
i. Emma and I had deja vu on the train getting there because once again we were a) traveling together b) on a commuter-rail train exactly like the one we took from Riga to Jurmala and back and in my bag were c) the same four cameras I had taken with us on our travels. Then a man came into our car and tried to sell everyone knife sharpeners that looked like fish and waved a very sharp knife and a very sharp pair of scissors around to demonstrate the quality of the sharpener.
ii. Oh my god, oh my god. As Olga said when I got home, I was очень доволна. Every one says to go to the park at Pavlovsk in the fall and see all the leaves, and today it was essentially raining yellow leaves. The day turned into the sunniest, freshest fall weather and no one could piss me off. I took over 300 pictures and I want to go back. Hell, I just want to live in that park and wander around for ages. My favorite moment was sitting under these birch trees in a little glade with everyone.
a. Before film class, I went to more museums featuring Pro Arte exhibits:
i. The Brodsky Apartment...
-- First off, did you know there was more than one famous Brodsky? This museum is the apartment of Isaak Brodsky, the Soviet painter, not Joseph Brodsky, the Russian poet.
-- Second, it was one of those typical, cramped, over-filled museums with a minimum of six (maximum of ten? twelve?) paintings on every wall.
-- The older women there were quite sweet and stood smiling and watching as I looked around the museum, though they may have charged me the foreigner entrance fee to the museum (100r when I think it was supposed to be 80r).
-- There was then an awkward language miscommunication when I asked about the Pro Arte exhibit which was an audio walking tour and they were like but you are a foreigner you don't speak Russian (given that at least 90% of this conversation was held in Russian) we don't have an English translation, sorry, and I was like no it's ok and they were like but we have no translation!!! And I finally gave up because it was by the same art group that did the Kolobok video in the Museum of Bread and I wasn't so into that so, whatever.
-- Best part of the museum was the sign demanding: "DON'T PHOTO!" I wanted to take a picture of it so badly....
ii. The Kirov Apartment...
-- Definitely wins for having the best museum babushki in the city. The woman at the kassa didn't charge me to get into the museum after showing her my student ID, and at one point they even put on a special Soviet cartoon on a TV just to show me.
-- Half the museum is set up like the apartment when Kirov lived there, complete with a polar bear skin rug.
-- There is also a large portrait of Kirov himself made entirely out of feathers (the man was really into hunting, apparently) with more full and realistic shading than I see in most drawings.
-- The Pro Arte exhibit there was really cool. It was a project involving old Soviet radios which are cool enough in themselves -- the artist photographed the radios and put the images on plastic panels encased in wooden boxes, lit from behind with a light bulb so they were glowing. The photographs on the boxes in one room were flat, straight-on portraits of the radios making the boxes themselves kind of look like radios, and the photographs on the boxes in another room were of the radios in various modern settings flying up in the air in pristine, photo-shopped-clean images. And then in the third room the actual radios were there on stands playing swanky, waltzy 50s Soviet music that gave the museum an entirely authentic and old-fashioned feel.
b. Something I noticed then when going home on the metro on Thursday night that didn't full sink in until Friday morning when it was confirmed:
i. The turned off the water in both of the fountains on the pedestrian street.
ii. They have dismantled and are taking away the pieces making up the beer garden (Adams! Ahh!) where we sat so often and people watched the metro this summer.
iii. Conclusion? Winter is coming. Olga even told me that there is a holiday on October 14th or 16th that is "Holiday of the First Snow." That is in about ten days.
c. Nabokov, love of my life, was the quote of the day on my iGoogle:
i. "My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music."
2. FRIDAY
a. Three classes on Friday make me so tired that I just went home after Bakhtin and sat in my pajamas and drank tea with Olga. Pretty wild start to the weekend.
b. Inbetween writing class and Bakhtin Lauren and I had our now-traditional picnic.
i. We decided we are going to keep this up for as long as possible, even persevering through snow.
ii. We ate: bread, sausage, cheese, carrot salad, chips, and a mini pie. I drank a multi-fruit juice box and Lauren had yogurt in a bottle.
3. SATURDAY
a. As you already know, printmaking was canceled.
b. Instead, I slept more and read in bed.
c. I also poked around in the consignment stores.
i. I may or may not have bought this really funky old Soviet guitar from the 80s (original price listed inside: 33r, I paid 500r [$20]) with pictures of Soviet beauty models decoupaged (spelling???) on the front and writing scrawled on the back such as "Москва 18.07.80".
ii. I am now going to (finally) learn how to play guitar.
d. Then there was a sports day in the park.
i. I sat and watched this time and shot a roll of film with the Kiev. We'll see how that comes out.
e. Followed by a group of us (BB, IT, LM, ED, JN, MK, EB) going to eat Chinese food.
i. Oh my god CHINESE FOOD. How I missed, thee.
ii. Chicken and peppers?? Fried rice?? What??
f. Followed by girliness in the dorm.
i. We kind of watched most of the black and white film Aleksandr Nevsky, though it dissolved into watching Notorious B.I.G. and Cassidy music videos on YouTube.
ii. Thanks to Maneka, my nailed were painted blue and pink with green stripes.
iii. Thanks to Ilana, my hair was french braided and is still fluffy from the experience.
4. SUNDAY
a. I was in Pavlovsk. All day.
i. Emma and I had deja vu on the train getting there because once again we were a) traveling together b) on a commuter-rail train exactly like the one we took from Riga to Jurmala and back and in my bag were c) the same four cameras I had taken with us on our travels. Then a man came into our car and tried to sell everyone knife sharpeners that looked like fish and waved a very sharp knife and a very sharp pair of scissors around to demonstrate the quality of the sharpener.
ii. Oh my god, oh my god. As Olga said when I got home, I was очень доволна. Every one says to go to the park at Pavlovsk in the fall and see all the leaves, and today it was essentially raining yellow leaves. The day turned into the sunniest, freshest fall weather and no one could piss me off. I took over 300 pictures and I want to go back. Hell, I just want to live in that park and wander around for ages. My favorite moment was sitting under these birch trees in a little glade with everyone.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Ahhhhh! Beautiful!!
Not that I don't love printmaking, but Pyoter just called and he has to go to America last minute and so we have no class today! Or next Saturday! Which is perfect because I would have had to miss next Saturday anyway because we're going to Pskov! I have so much free time today suddenly! I am going back to bed! This is great!
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Hey! 100 entries!
Well would you look at that. That's some kind of a landmark. Highmark? I am forgetting English. I was also wanting to see when I hit 100 self portraits, but I just realized that I already missed that. That day came and went uneventfully on 9/21/08.
My one RSL class that I have on Wednesdays was canceled yesterday because my teacher was really sick. Don't worry, I kept managed to keep myself sufficiently busy anyway.
On Saturday -- when I elected to wobble around outside on eight wheels instead of being cooped up inside -- was the opening day of the fall festival run by Pro Arte. Pro Arte is an organization in St. Petersburg that promotes the arts -- and their festival involves installing art exhibitions and projects at museums throughout the city that are smaller, quirkier, and often not as well known. On Saturday you could ride a free bus to all seven of the museums where exhibits are temporarily installed, but I didn't feel like being indoors let alone in museums crowded due to free admission. I decided instead I would check out each of the seven museums on the list on my own time, at my own pace, before the exhibitions are uninstalled on October 19th. This is also the kind of thing that reminded me of my list of the many, many museums I still have left to see in this city and gives me a push for seeing a bunch of them in the near future.
So, I started today with the Museum of Bread (one of Carly's favorites) which is not too far from my house. Man, it was awesome, Sasha it is really too bad we didn't get to go together there this summer -- it is just the kind of weird quirky museum you would love, like the Arctic/Antarctic Museum or the Museum of Hygenie. The museum is located on the fourth floor of a poorly labeled office building on Ligovskii Prospekt and is made up of three rooms. The first room you can go into without paying for a 30r ticket and is mostly made up of class cabinets displaying bags of bread made by different Russian bread companies, such as the delicious Хлебный Дом. The other two rooms -- which you have to pay to get into and are guarded by babushkii -- are made up of displays of plastic models of how they used to mold bread and table settings and the machines used in Soviet bread factories and such. It's totally weird and kind of dusty, but I am a big fan of museums like that. Not only that, but, as Carly promised me, the women who work there are unbelievably helpful and friendly and nice and are just so damn excited that they have visitors. When I asked them where the Pro Arte video exhibit was, they took me to the room, unlocked it just for me, and turned on the projector and warmed up the video and set it all up all after only asking where the exhibit was. I was so flattered by this that I felt I needed to stay and watch the entire video project -- called Kolobok and consisting of close up shots of people's faces and their reactions listening to a Russian fairytale -- even though I found it kind of tedious.... I ended up leaving after about a half an hour, feeling really guilty, but managing to slip out as all the women were distracted with a school group of five to seven year olds -- hanging up all their little coats in the front entrance.
I then spent some time doing errandy things -- I went to the post office to pick up a packge from Mom and Nunni (THANK YOU SO MUCH) and on a hunt for clothespins (long story, but they're called прищепки and I am never going to forget that word now after asking for them so many times). I was successful regarding both the package-pick-up and the прищепки-finding, but when I tried to check out two other museums where Pro Arte exhibits are, I had less luck. I located the Pushkin House Museum of Literature but was unable to gain entrance to the museum as it is closed today and tomorrow because of a conference, and as for the Soil Science Museum..... I found the door, I found the sign with its name on it, I even found the Pro Arte poster advertizing that, yes, this was indeed the Soil Science Museum and one of our exhibits is inside, the lights were even on in the building..... but the door was locked..... with no explanation or hours posted.....? Typical.
Spent some time at Smolny then, reading, watching movies for Jonathan's class with Matt, sitting, drinking tea, talking about arcaic punctuation with Eric and Bryan when Bryan was supposed to be working (POLL: how many of you have heard of the INTERROBANG? or, even better, the IRONY MARK?)..... and then I met up with Lauren (HEY MAN, hello, since I know you're such an avid reader of this blog despite how busy you are with all of your Fulbright research.... HA) to go to Pyoter's gallery opening which was part of our printmaking homework for this week (not self-serving at all, no, nope).
That was.... not what I expected. Lauren and I went to Mohovaya to find one empty bright white room with one huge painting on four panels proped up in the corner.
Yup. Just like that.
A blurry-eyed Pyoter holding a glass of champagne found us and asked us what we thought and invited us to another opening on October 12th. Everyone else was standing outside smoking. We left after less than ten minutes, and instead tried to go eat for free at a restaurant that Lauren needed to review for her internship at the St. Petersburg Times..... but in typical fashion, the first place we tried (which was located in Lauren's apartment building) turned out to not be a restaurant at all and the second one (which was located in my apartment building) we tried was busy with a wedding party. So. That failed honorably. But then I just went around the corner and into my dvor and home where I ate more mushroom soup with Olga and called it a night.
Last night before bed I did finally catch up on all of my picture uploading..... we've got self portraits bringing the total up to a nice 111 and some holga pictures from a roll I don't like that much.... and ALL THE DIGITAL from the past ten days....
Now it's Thursday and I don't have class until later this afternoon, so I am going to attempt two more Pro Arte exhibits..... let's hope for Museum of Bread luck and not Soil Science Museum luck.
My one RSL class that I have on Wednesdays was canceled yesterday because my teacher was really sick. Don't worry, I kept managed to keep myself sufficiently busy anyway.
On Saturday -- when I elected to wobble around outside on eight wheels instead of being cooped up inside -- was the opening day of the fall festival run by Pro Arte. Pro Arte is an organization in St. Petersburg that promotes the arts -- and their festival involves installing art exhibitions and projects at museums throughout the city that are smaller, quirkier, and often not as well known. On Saturday you could ride a free bus to all seven of the museums where exhibits are temporarily installed, but I didn't feel like being indoors let alone in museums crowded due to free admission. I decided instead I would check out each of the seven museums on the list on my own time, at my own pace, before the exhibitions are uninstalled on October 19th. This is also the kind of thing that reminded me of my list of the many, many museums I still have left to see in this city and gives me a push for seeing a bunch of them in the near future.
So, I started today with the Museum of Bread (one of Carly's favorites) which is not too far from my house. Man, it was awesome, Sasha it is really too bad we didn't get to go together there this summer -- it is just the kind of weird quirky museum you would love, like the Arctic/Antarctic Museum or the Museum of Hygenie. The museum is located on the fourth floor of a poorly labeled office building on Ligovskii Prospekt and is made up of three rooms. The first room you can go into without paying for a 30r ticket and is mostly made up of class cabinets displaying bags of bread made by different Russian bread companies, such as the delicious Хлебный Дом. The other two rooms -- which you have to pay to get into and are guarded by babushkii -- are made up of displays of plastic models of how they used to mold bread and table settings and the machines used in Soviet bread factories and such. It's totally weird and kind of dusty, but I am a big fan of museums like that. Not only that, but, as Carly promised me, the women who work there are unbelievably helpful and friendly and nice and are just so damn excited that they have visitors. When I asked them where the Pro Arte video exhibit was, they took me to the room, unlocked it just for me, and turned on the projector and warmed up the video and set it all up all after only asking where the exhibit was. I was so flattered by this that I felt I needed to stay and watch the entire video project -- called Kolobok and consisting of close up shots of people's faces and their reactions listening to a Russian fairytale -- even though I found it kind of tedious.... I ended up leaving after about a half an hour, feeling really guilty, but managing to slip out as all the women were distracted with a school group of five to seven year olds -- hanging up all their little coats in the front entrance.
I then spent some time doing errandy things -- I went to the post office to pick up a packge from Mom and Nunni (THANK YOU SO MUCH) and on a hunt for clothespins (long story, but they're called прищепки and I am never going to forget that word now after asking for them so many times). I was successful regarding both the package-pick-up and the прищепки-finding, but when I tried to check out two other museums where Pro Arte exhibits are, I had less luck. I located the Pushkin House Museum of Literature but was unable to gain entrance to the museum as it is closed today and tomorrow because of a conference, and as for the Soil Science Museum..... I found the door, I found the sign with its name on it, I even found the Pro Arte poster advertizing that, yes, this was indeed the Soil Science Museum and one of our exhibits is inside, the lights were even on in the building..... but the door was locked..... with no explanation or hours posted.....? Typical.
Spent some time at Smolny then, reading, watching movies for Jonathan's class with Matt, sitting, drinking tea, talking about arcaic punctuation with Eric and Bryan when Bryan was supposed to be working (POLL: how many of you have heard of the INTERROBANG? or, even better, the IRONY MARK?)..... and then I met up with Lauren (HEY MAN, hello, since I know you're such an avid reader of this blog despite how busy you are with all of your Fulbright research.... HA) to go to Pyoter's gallery opening which was part of our printmaking homework for this week (not self-serving at all, no, nope).
That was.... not what I expected. Lauren and I went to Mohovaya to find one empty bright white room with one huge painting on four panels proped up in the corner.
Yup. Just like that.A blurry-eyed Pyoter holding a glass of champagne found us and asked us what we thought and invited us to another opening on October 12th. Everyone else was standing outside smoking. We left after less than ten minutes, and instead tried to go eat for free at a restaurant that Lauren needed to review for her internship at the St. Petersburg Times..... but in typical fashion, the first place we tried (which was located in Lauren's apartment building) turned out to not be a restaurant at all and the second one (which was located in my apartment building) we tried was busy with a wedding party. So. That failed honorably. But then I just went around the corner and into my dvor and home where I ate more mushroom soup with Olga and called it a night.
Last night before bed I did finally catch up on all of my picture uploading..... we've got self portraits bringing the total up to a nice 111 and some holga pictures from a roll I don't like that much.... and ALL THE DIGITAL from the past ten days....
Now it's Thursday and I don't have class until later this afternoon, so I am going to attempt two more Pro Arte exhibits..... let's hope for Museum of Bread luck and not Soil Science Museum luck.
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