I'm in Russia... - I'm baaaaaaaaaack....

June 5, 2008

My days in DC were fairly uneventful.  It was a 2 day meet and greet and meetings were interspersed.  Out of the 80 CLS recipients, 11 are PhD students, 10 are MA students, and the remaining are BS/BA students.  I am one of two students from MSU, while U of M just had to beat us with 3 students.  A Grand Valley student also received the scholarship, so our state is pretty well represented.  Two students won the Russian CLS last year and won it again this year, so that is something I may consider looking into for next summer.  During one of our meetings, we got to hear from a career panel about how they use Russian in their careers.  There was one person from the private sector, who works for Honeywell as Russian linguist, but he also works part time for the government, so he gave us a plug on that instead of the private sector.  Bummer.  Other than the tourists, the people of DC seem a little snooty.  After being in the city, I definitely plan on living outside of it.  The city itself is very nice, but like any big city it is dangerous and expensive, and has snooty city people!

We were on 2 different flights into Frankfurt, and then we were all on the same flight from Frankfurt to Saint Petersburg.  We arrived in Russia at 1:30pm local time, which means 5:30am Michigan time.  Since I don’t posses the ability to sleep on planes, I was quite miserable.  Our group split in half and my group was the first to board a coach bus to transport us to the hotel.  I commented to someone on the bus that we were lucky to get the first bus to the hotel, and I think that statement is ultimately the cause of the following situation.

On the way out of the airport, our bus had to go through something like a security booth.  Between the narrow lane through which we had to drive and the completely incompetent driver, the side of the bus hit the side of the security booth, damaging the booth and breaking one of the bus’ windows.  We had to unpack all of our luggage, get off the bus and sit on the curb for 45 minutes until another bus showed.  I thought the funniest part of this situation was when the police had to show up to file a report, but the funniest part was definitely the fact that the bus pulled out onto the middle of the street and remained there even after the window was broken.  At one point in time, another car actually ran into the bus in the process of passing it.  Haha.

After finally making it to the hotel, we checked in, ate dinner, and went to bed around 9pm local time.  The hotel is much nicer than the dump MSU put us in last year, which was located on the outskirts of the city.  This hotel is very close to the main street (Nevsky Prospekt) and the water doesn’t smell as much like a dirty fish tank.

This morning we had orientations all day, which are somewhat a waste of time if one has already been to Russia – “don’t drink the water”, “be aware of pick pockets”, “don’t buy kvas from the street vendors”, etc.  Nothing new.  We are going out to lunch soon, and we are going on a boat ride tonight.  Should be a good time.

June 6, 2008

Boat ride was cold!  Brrrr!  We were on the Neva from 10pm to 12am, and the sun was shining the whole time.  During the boat ride, I was thinking about how empty all the streets were, then I realized it was 11:30pm on a Thursday night!  I took a picture so you can fully appreciate St. Petersburg’s “White Nights”.  The sun was only down from 1am-4am this morning.  Today consisted of a very useless orientation session, which could have been avoided, had the leaders split the group into two: “People who have been to Russia and have no ridiculous questions” and “People who have never been to Russia and/or have ridiculous questions”.  They did not, however, split the group, and I was forced to hear questions about riding public transportation and using a phone card to call the US.  *sigh*  But I’m back in my hotel room now, considering buying a SIM card and/or going to the McDonald’s (with free wi-fi) to post this online.  Tomorrow we leave the hotel at 5am to go to the airport and head to our respective cities.  I’m very happy orientation is over, I’m ready to go to a new city and start doing things on my own.  Being in a large American blob in Russia is simply embarrassing.  I meet my host family tomorrow night, and I am afraid that after 2 great host families, my lucky is up.  Hopefully I am wrong and my host family ends up being awesome.  I guess I’ll find out tomorrow!