Huh, it's been a while, hasn't it?
...Yeah...
I'm very sorry, but I've never been good at keeping diary-type things, and that's back when I never had new, exciting things happening most days to stop me even having enough time to write the stuff!
But, I've just started part 2 of my Year Abroad in the great city of St Petersburg, so let's see if I can maybe restart this thing.
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So I've been here 3 days now, and I guess the best way to go about it is through the magic of recap! If you want to imagine a wavy screen transition here, then I'll put a little slot to place it for you:
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Transitiooooooooonn
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There's not really much out of the ordinary to report about at Heathrow Airport other than the fact I met up with some people from Manchester, so I guess I'll skip ahead to landing in Petersburg.
So we landed in Petersburg, which is good, since that's where we were meant to go and made our way through the good old-fashioned rigamaroll (...That can't be how you spell it, but it's a silly enough word that I don't actually care) of getting through an airport. Fortunately for us, everything actually went pretty damn smoothly. The lady at passport control could almost have been considered not 100% absolutely apathetic about her job!
Anyway, we met up with the RLUS people and were given little packs of information about what we had to do the following day, over the semester and just to survive in general. For some reason I was surprised to see a man's name listed as my host, though that's almost certainly a side-effect of most people affectionately referring to our host families as "бабушки" (grandmothers/old women).
Anyway then, much like Tver', they ferried us to a couple of minibuses, only the trip didn't take 4 hours and we did actually stop once or twice in regular traffic! On the journey I thought to myself "Please don't go over a bridge, please don't go over a bridge..." Because after a certain time at night the bridges of the city raise up and it's impossible to get from one part of the city to the other while they are raised.
Anyway, so we crossed over a bridge and after a short while reached the place I'd be staying, where I promptly got out of the minibus, grabbed my bag and followed my host, Vladimir. Very Russian name, I know, but it gets better.
When we got up to the flat I was also greeted by his wife, who I later learned is named Olga. Yes, really, Vlad and Olga, it's brilliant. They showed me to my room and left me to unpack, which I did, partially to be organised and partially because I was still worried about trying to interact with them in my heavily-rusted Russian. But I needed to pee, and had no idea where the toilet was, so I had to bite the bullet and ask where it was. And now I know, so that's good.
After this I had a bit of a chat with Olga, and I learned...
Well.
Last year, one of the people who was in 3rd year posted a Facebook status saying that his family had a shower in the kitchen and that it was really awkward. My one, sincere hope for my stay in St Petersburg was that I wouldn't wind up in a house like that.
...Guess where the shower in this house is!
Anyway, I asked Olga what was for dinner, to which she responded by looking thoughtfully at the pot bubbling on the hob, turned back to me and replied "...Uh, something tasty. I'll call you when it's ready." (In Russian, by the way, they don't speak any English, apparently.)
So I went back to my room and read for a while until I was summoned to the kitchen, which is all of 5 steps from my room. Did I mention this place is tiny? It is. The toilet-room is pretty much the size of a standard cubicle in a public toilet. Perhaps even a little smaller.
I went and sat and ate the something tasty (and it was, she didn't lie! It was rice and chicken and sauce and...Yeah, I'm not sure what I'd call it either, so she had a point) while Olga sat opposite me and watched the television. We chatted as well, and I felt very proud of myself that I was still capable of holding Russian conversation when I put my mind to it! (At least at that point, but later evidence proves otherwise...) I talked a bit about myself, asked Olga a bit about herself and learned that they have 2 cats, Topsik (I think. I thought she said Toxic at first, which seemed insane) and I didn't catch the other cat's name.
Anyway, I went back to my room to relax for a while and I met Topsik right then and there because he was sitting on my bed, staring at me with that special look both cats and Russians have which simply says "...What the hell do you want?", so when a Russian cat does it, it's extra powerful.
I read, I used the computer (There's Wi-fi here, it's a miracle!) and told my Mum that I'd arrived safely and everything and finally went to bed. Thanks to jetlag I still wasn't tired until around 3am, but I slept nonetheless.
Yeesh, and that's only the first day...
So, the second day began with a hearty breakfast of Каша (Porridge), before Vladimir said it was time to go. Turns out he works at the Benedict School as (we think) a caretaker, so he and his coworker gave me and two girls (Henny and Lizzie) a lift to the School. We sat for a while waiting for others to turn up, which they did. They took our passports for registration and then we were led into a hall for an introduction from our RLUS representatives (already proving they were more worth than the ones in Tver'...) and some of the important members of the school, which went pretty much exactly as you'd expect. We then had a short proficency test so that they could decide which groups to shove us in. Thus ended our first day at the Benedict School, at around 12.30. So we went to get lunch which was about as authentically Russian as it gets: McDonalds. When the lady at the till asked "Fries?", I rather flusteredly responded "Yes, please", to which she responded with slight bemusement at first before processing the order. It only occurred to me as we were moving to the tables that she was asking what size I wanted...
I wish that was the worst I had been at Russian that day, but that comes later.
(Alright, this is what I wrote, like, 3 days ago and I haven't added to it since, so I'll try to keep non-important info brief from hereon out.)
Got some Russian Simcards with people, all went well, the guy spoke English, quite surprisingly. Also got a nice, cheap Nokia in case of theftery.
Went back to the hostel where most people are staying and chatted until Amie turned up and, in passing, said she was going to a Japanese class. At the mention of the possibility of studying Japanese my ears jumped up and I accompanied her to the place where we can learn it 'n' shit. When we were in the office, we tried to explain the situation in Russian (THIS is where my Russian was the worst for that day, so when I was trying to make the case of "No, really, I DO speak Russian!" I think they less than believed me...)
We sat a placement test and I did fairly poorly, though that's not a huge surprise, while Amie did pretty much perfectly, since she really only needs to improve her Kanji at this stage. We were invited to try out classes happening later that day, which we did. Hers was at 7, and mine at 7:30, and all throughout mine the teacher translated the sentences into both Russian and English. This wouldn't normally bother me, but when the sentences are "This is a book." "Mr Miller is American", I feel a teeeensy bit patronised. She also introduced me to the class with the statement "He speaks Russian poorly", so that didn't help.
After class two of my classmates, Tamara and Sasha, caught up to me and chatted with me on the way back to the metro. They also told me what stations to get, which was very kind of them, though I had a map anyway even if they hadn't. The class ran until 21:45, and the best part: That's going to be happening every Monday and Wednesday from this point onwards! Yaaay...
Got back to the Metro station near my accommodation (about 15-minutes of walking) and remembered only that we had turned left to get there from the house that morning. I didn't remember the street name, or which direction we'd come from, so I set off walking. I really need to get better at not being so damned worried about inconveniencing people, because if I'd just called Olga I'd've been home so much sooner. Anyway, I wandered around for about half an hour before finally calling her and asking what street it was. It wasn't far, but I still got home around 11pm.
The next day was Tuesday, and classes began. Made my way to the school without much incident and the lessons were alright, I suppose. We had a lesson on topical discussion in Russia, one on Grammar and another on general speaking. Speaking sounds like it's going to be nasty later on, gonna have to do debates and even lead at least one...
I don't actually remember what I did with the rest of my day on Tuesday...I think I might've just buggered off back home and done bugger all, I seem to recall being tired.
Wednesday we had grammar again and film, which was good! We sat and watched a film while she told us what was going on every now and then, and it was a good film, too! Looking forward to seeing how the rest of it goes.
Went and bought lunch and hung around with people until around 7, at which point I went for the second Japanese class, which went much like the first one. Actually, I turned up late, and she was all "Oh, Joe, you're just in time, you're going to be writing on the blackboard!"
And I didn't much like the sound of that. Turns out she just needed me to write hiragana on the board and the romanised pronunciations of them (e.g. か, 'ka'). After the lesson I managed to muster up my courage and tell her that she didn't need to keep explaining everything in both English and Russian since I understood the Russian, and I expected that trying that I would have ended up saying "Me can spaek Russkii, I...shit, how do you say promise....erm...Radish? No..." (all in Russian, obviously.)
Weirdly enough, when I started saying this, she actually said "Yes, you speak Russian quite well!", which just led me to further wonder why she felt the need to explain to me what "That book is mine" means...
Riding the wave of confidence, I asked Olya upon my return (at 22:30 this time, though that's about as early as I'll ever be able to make it after Japanese) how to use the bizarre kitchower and whether I needed to alert everyone to the fact that I was about to use it. Turns out it's very simple, and I only need to say I'm going to use it if somebody's in the kitchen. The kitchen door has a lock, so really it has the same privacy as a bathroom. All is well!
Thursday was our group's day off, so we decided to look around the city a little. However, we were in the odd situation that we wanted to explore, but not everyone had the day off, so we couldn't go and find anything TOO culturally interesting...Nevertheless, just by walking around a bit we found St Isaac's cathedral, the Bronze horseman, the Winter Palace and Nevskiy Prospekt! Turns out there's a lot of stuff in Petersburg.
Sadly, I was an idiot again, and I can't yet get my pictures from my phone to blogspot, but I'll try things and maybe, just maybe, I'll find a way.
On ze Friiiiiday/yesterday, we had lessons again, which was a weird feeling. Thursday felt like a weekend, and Saturday actually WOULD be the weekend, so it was a bit like being directly between two weekends, and have I said weekend enough? I think it could use a few more weekends to really reach some kind of weekend-based record for this blog. Or at the very least fill my weekend quota.
Weekend.
The lessons were topical discussion again, translation, and conversation. In conversation we had a quiz about St Petersburg held by Jordan (who everyone agrees was a rather unorthodox quizmaster. The first question was "where do I live?"...). Apparently I won, and got a free map from the teacher, though I get the feeling it might've been an arbitrarily chosen victory...
Afterwards we went to the shops again and did shop-based things before getting some lunch (lunchtime has now changed to be, like, 4pm, it's kinda strange.) What with it being a Friday and all, people were feeling all geared up to go out pubbing and clubbing, but I've never been one for clubbing, and I wasn't really feeling the pubbing either. In fact, once I got home, I pretty much wound up going to bed around 9pm.
As for today, since everybody had gone out, people weren't doing much. Around 3pm I went and tried to find a place where apparently some people were meeting up for food and chatting about the night before, but I have absolutely no idea where it was. Turns out the nearest Metro Station was actually closed, too, so I had a little bit of an exploration of the Metro system.
Anyway, failing to find the place and giving up due to the rain, I went and hung out with people at the hostel again before coming back home and writing this blog post.
YES! I'm caught up! Sorry if this post wasn't very entertaining, but I just wanted to get it written at this point. Trying to be witty takes time, and if I'd stuck with that, I'd probably still be writing this post come June when I'll be leaving.
In any case, thanks for readin' this! I'll try to post a bit more regularly than I did in Tver'. Cheerio!
