Well, I picked what was one of my busiest weeks in Russia so far to take a break from blogs. I’m not completely sure where I left off…so I’ll try to fill in the gaps as best as I can.
Friday night I went to a Shabbat service at some orthodox synagogue in a business center I’ve never heard of. It was an interesting experience, and probably the first service I’ve gone to in Russia that I actually enjoyed. It was conducted by orthodox rabbis…but it wasn’t the same atmosphere as at the Chassidic synagogue or at the very reform Hillel. After the service, there was a dinner, and I sat with Roma and Misha. On my left sat an older Georgian man, who kept asking me questions all through dinner. While the Rabbi was giving a toast and talking about how important it is for young people to be involved in the temple and carry on Jewish traditions, the man next to me leaned over and asked “how long are you here?” and I told him that I leave in about a month. He said “a month? You’ll never manage to find a wife in that little time!” and I started laughing so hard that the rabbi shot me a death stare, and I couldn’t stop.
Saturday I met up with Roma and his girlfriend, Alla, and the three of us went to Peterhoff for the day. I was there two years ago when we went on an excursion, but then we had a tour guide and everything was very structured. This time, we wandered freely, and between Roma and Alla I got most of the history. It’s really an incredible place, with fountains made out of gold everywhere in all kinds of different designs with hidden spouts to spray people as they step on the wrong stones in the sidewalk, tremendous gardens, and a beautiful palace. Peter the Great, as it turns out, had a great sense of humor.
One thing that I really don’t understand- the squirrels here. It seems that there are very few squirrels in the area, and as a result anytime I’ve gone anywhere near the woods, I always see a crowd of Russians fighting with each other vying for the attention of a confused squirrel that wants to have nothing to do with any of them. I took a picture of about 10 people crouched down trying to get a squirrel to come closer so they could take a picture of her.
They invited me to a movie, and even though I had already been a few days earlier with Vova, I was having a good time with them and decided to go for it. We went out to eat, and saw “Night at the Museum 2”. It was hokey, silly, and dumb…but we had a good time. Back when I first met Roma, he used to make fun of me for using some phrases that he said were very out-dated and sounded strange to hear in every-day conversation. In the movie, Ivan the Terrible had a role, and used every single one of the phrases that Roma made fun of me for, and each time the two of us started laughing and Alla, who was sitting between us, gave us confused looks.
After I left the two of them, I met up with another friend, Stella. It was her last weekend in St. Petersburg (she’s an actual Russian student of the university), as the semester had ended and she was getting ready to go home. Before she left, she wanted to see the opening of the bridges, and as I hadn’t seen them yet either I agreed to go along. I forgot that because she lives in a dorm that locks the doors at 1am and the bridges don’t open until 1 we would have to stay out all night. Well…we met up around midnight, and planned how to kill some time. We bought tickets to a movie, had a late dinner, and walked down Nevskii to the Dvortsovia Bridge. We watched the bridge go up, and took pictures of the people juggling fire on the shore. After spending some time watching the boats go under the bridge and the street performers, we went to what was my third movie of the week. We bought tickets for the last movie playing in the theatre, which turned out to be a French chick-flick about a husband and wife who enter into a psychiatrist’s experiment wherein they try to reverse roles to see the effects on their lives. She gets a job at a company that makes construction equipment and he becomes a stay-at-home dad. She starts becoming more and more aggressive and he starts wearing bright colors and remodeling the bathroom. It had a lot of corny stereotypes, but it was funny. It was also the nicest movie theatre I’ve ever seen. It was a ‘VIP’ lounge, where the tickets are a little more expensive, but instead of chairs, you watch movies on plush leather couches. I would love to find a theatre like that in the United States.
I got home around 7:30 in the morning, slept until about 11, and met up with another friend at the Park of Victory. We rented a boat, and went around the series of lakes in the middle of the park. I had wanted to see more of the park, and it was good weather for a boat ride…most of it, anyway…at one point it started drizzling, but it didn’t last very long.
Monday I went back to the Belorussian consulate and picked up my visa and met up with Stella to help her get her luggage to the train (I live about five minutes from the train station). She had three duffle bags, a backpack, a briefcase, and two plastic bags filled with assorted things. I said “you called me kind of last minute for help with this. If I hadn’t been available…how would you have managed all this?” and she smiled and said “I’m a Russian woman!”
I helped her load everything on the train, and had a chance to see what my conditions will be like on the way to the Ukraine. She told me the same thing that everyone else has told me- read a lot, bring snack food, and keep an eye on your things at all times. I told her “what are you worried about? I thought you were a ‘Russian woman?’” and she said “I am…but don’t forget that there are plenty of Russian men!”
Yesterday and today I had my Test of Russian as a Foreign Language. Yesterday I took the three written portions (letter writing, grammar, and reading comprehension) and today was the two verbal portions (listening and speaking). Reading was easy- I finished the 1 hour section in less than 20 minutes. Letter writing was tricky, because the topics were very bland and I had trouble coming up with anything to write about…and grammar was tough. I started off strong, but then got into sections that always give me trouble. I do fine with that stuff when I’m speaking, listening and reading…but it’s hard for me to just sit down and correct sentences.
Today went very well. The listening portion didn’t give me any trouble, and I know I did well on the speaking section. I’m a little frustrated though. I really wish I had decided to take level three. I signed up for level two with the understanding that I had the FSOT coming up, and perhaps it would be better to take the lower level first and then move up…but I saw a few of my classmates taking level three that I feel are on the same level of ability as me, and most of the people I saw taking the exam with me, while perhaps they are better with the grammar, I feel like there was a significant difference between us. Oh well…if I did pass (and I hope I did…I get my results tomorrow) then I think when I get back from Ukraine I will take level 3.
Yesterday after testing, I called up An and we went to the Zoological Museum together. It was really interesting. At first I was a little hesitant, because I got there before An, and when I walked in I realized that I was the oldest person there… but after a while I realized that not everyone there was under ten years of age, and we saw a lot of really interesting exhibits. It was a lot bigger than it looked from the outside, and all of the exhibits were real…in the sense that they were all stuffed animals. They had an incredible assortment of animals, including several which are currently extinct. The Mammoth exhibit was particularly interesting, where they had different examples of the evolution from mammoth to elephant. In the predatory animals section, they had a lot of really graphic exhibits set up with displays of things like lions ripping apart zebras and things like that. I mentioned to An that it was a lot different from an American museum, in the sense that I’ve never been to a museum filled with stuffed animals attacking each other, and he was shocked to realize that the animals were real. He thought that they were imitation, and when I asked the woman working there and she confirmed it, he couldn’t believe it.
As I was asking him what kind of animals they have in Taiwan that aren’t in Russia, we stumbled upon some kind of Taiwanese monkey. I asked him if instead of dogs, everyone has a pet monkey, and he told me that he doesn’t like that particular kind of monkey. Apparently when he was a little kid he was at the zoo with his parents, and he leaned in too close to a cage and one of them grabbed his hair and tried to pull him in.
After the museum, we walked up Nevksii, and stopped into the souvenir market by the Church on Spilled blood so he could look around (he’s leaving in about three weeks). We happened upon an honest merchant in a good mood and a sense of humor, who talked with us for about forty-five minutes about how ridiculous it is how easy it is ripping off tourists. She taught us how to tell which souvenirs are fake, how even the artists get ripped off, told us which stuff is really made in China and imported for tourists, told us which “hand-made” dolls are really printed by computer and then highlighted with a marker, and told us about how easy it is to tell how much someone is willing to spend on useless junk as soon as they walk up to the booth. After talking with her (the three of us became acquainted- her name was Elena), for fun I went to another booth around the corner and spoke to the merchant only in English, and listened to how she talked to me to the other women there in Russian about me as she tried to figure out how to get me to buy the more expensive nesting dolls. I specifically asked her which doll would be most representative of Russian culture that I could bring home and brag about, and she grabbed the model that Elena had specifically told us is printed by a machine and highlighted by hand to give it an ‘authentic hand-made’ look. I let her try to convince me to spent $25 on a doll that probably cost about 30 cents to make. In the end, I told her I ‘had to think about it’ and we walked away laughing as I listened to her complain about me.
It was time for us to split up, and I asked An what he was up to. He said he wasn’t going back quite yet. I commented that he must really not like the new roommate, and he said “let me give you an example. Last week around midnight I started getting ready for bed, and he said ‘An, would you mind staying up just a little longer? I invited a couple friends over.’ Two girls came over, and they didn’t leave until after four in the morning, and the whole time they were over they were really loud.” I told him that he’s been living there for eight months already and he doesn’t have to listen to the guy who’s been there for three weeks. He’s not particularly confrontational.
Today after the exam I called up An again to go back to museums (we’re both trying to cram in as much as we can in the last month). He had already gotten back to the dorm and was having lunch, so I started on my own and he said he’d meet up with me in a couple hours. I went to the house of Menshikov, the first governor of St. Petersburg. It was really disappointing and boring. Basically, I spent a half hour walking around the house of a dead rich person. Yeah, he was the first governor of St. Petersburg, but it reminded me of going to Buchanan’s house in Pennsylvania. Instead of cultural, historical artifacts, it was just looking at a lot of expensive furniture and over-the-top décor. Fortunately admission was free for students.
An still hadn’t made it to the center yet, so I went on to another museum by myself. This time was the State Museum of the History of Russian Political Police. It was really interesting, with a whole section on Soviet spies that operated in the U.S. during the cold war. It was ruined for me, however, by the old lady working there. They gave me a little booklet to carry with me when I walked in, and she kept following me around and telling me that I was going through the exhibits all wrong. She kept saying things like “of course you can do what you want, but you should really start from over here,” and wouldn’t leave me alone, even when I made it very clear I didn’t need a tour guide. Any time I missed an exhibit or faced the wrong direction, she came over and started to correct me. Eventually I had enough of her and left. I was able to see almost everything, though.
An finally arrived, and the two of us went to the Museum of Russian Print. We saw the original publishing house for Pravda, and the office where Lenin worked as editor. There was some kind of event going on for pensioners in the print-shop, so we were only able to see part of the museum, but I guess not too many people stop by so one of the women working there gave us a guided tour. From first view I expected it to be painfully boring, but it turned out to be rather interesting.
We tried to go to Pushkin’s house (our original destination, the Print museum just happened to be on the way and admission was free for students) but we got there five minutes after they stopped selling tickets. We walked around the garden in the middle of his estate and headed out. He had a ticket to see the Magic Flute at the Marinskii, and while I really want to see something there, I decided not to for two reasons: 1) I saw the opera twice already when Brittany played in the pit orchestra, and 2) the opera was playing in the new building, not the original. I felt kind of bad because I think An has been doing a lot of things by himself since the new guy moved into the dorm room, but while he’s a good person and I enjoy spending time with him, we have different interests. We are going to go to Moscow sometime mid-June for a day after I get back from Kiev/Minsk.
Last night Olga asked me if I collect foreign money, and I told her yes. She told me to go sit at the kitchen table, and brought out a big plastic bag full of Soviet kopecks, with 1, 2, 3, and 5 kopeck coins from almost every year from the early sixties until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. we organized them all by year and denomination, and then she gave me a few coins from every year. I keep telling her to stop giving me things, and she told me that it’s another one of the things that her husband collected and she has no interest in and has been wanting to get rid of but can’t stand to throw away. I told her as long as she’s trying to give me everything she owns, I really like the chairs in the living room.
I’ve really been unbelievably lucky to have found this living situation. She’s one of the nicest women I’ve ever met, and I feel a huge difference in my Russian from our nightly chats over tea. She told me tonight that she’s leaving on the sixth (while I’m in the Ukraine) for her summer house, and I will rarely see her for the rest of the time I’m here. That’s really too bad, because I’ve really been enjoying our time together.
Some interesting things I’ve seen this week: tonight while I was walking down Nevskii home from the museum with An: a homeless woman in an alleyway dancing like she was in a disco-club in the 1970’s to the music from a strip-club above her. Over the weekend, when I was waiting a the Metro for Stella to show up, I saw a nerdy looking kid walk by me with an inflatable doll in a renaissance era dress three times in about 15 minutes. While I was walking home after the late night of watching the bridges open and close, I saw a kid around 18-19 years old walking down the street in just a pair of shorts with no shirt on and he had scratch marks all over his arms and shoulders- when a random drunk girl on the street asked him where his shirt was, I think he started crying. This afternoon, while I was standing at the Metro waiting for An, I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt that said ‘Sh*t Happens When You Party Naked!’ and had a picture of a plastic cup and a hand giving a thumbs up.
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