July 2009
24 posts
because everything must continue. →
This is the link to kiwiinreallife, my regular blog.
“This July, you’re finally ready and willing to let go of anything that...”
– -The June/July issue of Teen Vogue.
I generally don’t hold much stock in horoscopes. I know they’re really broad and generic, but I always read them, even if only to mock how wrong they are. I just started reading a bunch of the magazines I got delivered while I was away, and I almost...
oh, to be home.
Coming to you all straight from the desk in New Jersey that was very familiar to me six weeks ago. Right now, everything in my house seems foreign and somehow way different than I remember. It doesn’t help that my parents had the outside of our house redone, and we have new appliances and things all inside, so it actually is different, and it’s not just my imagination.
I feel the need...
Becoming part of Russian literary history,...
Since I have last updated, every hour of my life has been jam-packed with activities that nobody wants to miss out on. We’re all leaving the country this weekend, so last weekend, we started cramming random things into our last week. On Monday, I met with my peer tutor, Xenia, because we still hadn’t gone to the used book store that she was telling me about. We went there, and it was the coolest...
We’re on a boat.
Because Thursday was such a fail at trying to get into Yusupov Palace, yesterday Galina, Peter, and I went back. Once again, we were stricken with tragedy, because if we waited on the ticket line, we would have missed the tour (one tour per day for what we wanted to see!) and then it would have been pointless to get tickets. For awhile we just floated around wondering what to do, and then we...
Чхгь-Чхгь конечно!
And so the madness continues. In the past couple of days, there has hardly been a spare moment. Classes are getting progressively crazier, and the Rutgers group has suddenly been struck with the drive to cram as many activities as possible into our last week or so here. This is completely fine by me- I personally consider sitting around our dorm room to be psychologically draining, especially with...
so the bus passes worked.
just a little note, since i said i’d let you know, that our bus passes worked. yay for forged documents! it’s pretty much the most hysterical thing on the planet.
Dear America; Happy Belated Birthday. Love,...
As you all know, us silly Russians spent our 4th of July at Gatchina, which is a suburb of St. Petersburg. I still can’t decide if I would call it a farm or not- Svetlana’s mother’s house was kind of old-school and had an enormous garden, but other parts of the town were industrial and pretty urban. Before we actually got to Mama Svieta’s house, we toured Paul’s Gatchina Palace. It was a simpler...
Shurale, Morrissey, and the return of our hot...
Sunday night was our second ballet at the Marinsky Theater. This time we saw Shurale, which is apparently a really old folktale that has been modernized for this more contemporary ballet. Svetlana explained the story to us all, and it was basically an old school “good vs. evil” theme, with some odd twists. The ballet itself was very enjoyable. Like I said, it was odd, but that just added to the...
June 2009
43 posts
Skipping classes for the river, more adventures...
So I have to update you all since Wednesday, because that’s where I left off, and so much has happened. (Running theme: even when nothing’s happening here, something’s happening.) On Wednesday, the teacher for our last Russian class didn’t show up because they booked the same teacher for two different classes. We couldn’t just go home because we had an excursion later in the day, so we went across...
hooligans, dramatics & the ballet.
once again, i can’t even begin to explain what’s been happening in the last few days, so you will all get the condensed version. everytime one of us opens our mouth, it’s basically a quote funny enough to be featured here, but maybe nobody else would get our jokes. anyway. (“hooligans” is a reference to our crazy tour guide, because she said it sooo weird in her...
So, the White Nights are apparently dark.
Honestly, it’s been light out every single night since we got here. The sun usually has set for about an hour. But apparently we went on the White Nights tour a day or so early to avoid crowds, and it was dark. The tour guide kept saying things like, “Oh, don’t worry- it’s just cloudy.” But I mean, come on. Dark is dark, and I can tell the difference between night and cloudy. We all got some...
the assimilation & dramatics continue.
There is never a boring day here. It’s fabulous. I don’t even know how to begin describing what went on in the last few days since I last wrote. On Wednesday, Emily, Joe, and I were walking home from school, and we saw this statue of the first police captain of some regime, and so we tried to take a picture of it because we thought it would do along with our project, which had to do a lot with the...
“Me: “Yeah, so we get home at around 6 everyday, and then we have to read...”
– Where the magic of Russian linguistics happens, room 223.
"i'm going to stab you with a fork."
Yesterday we went to the Russian Museum of Political History. The museum itself was fabulous, and had so many Soviet propaganda posters and most of us were absolutely ecstatic to be there. The tour guide was trying her very best to suck every last ounce of energy out of us. She was having major problems trying to think of the English words to express what she wanted to say. While we all appreciate...
the end of our hot water, freedom, & sanity.
most of you know that the “roomie sitch” has become more than a sitch, and we’re all slowly going insane. we all literally had to get america involved in order to even get listened to. they officially turned off our hot water today. it was supposed to be gone from june 16-30, but apparently they decided to screw us all over and start early. today was a pretty decent day, beyond...
