Petersburg

It becomes apparent to me that St. Petersburg is unlike any other city in the world. Some call it "The Venice of the north" It was built on a river delta from nothing mirroring central europe. It looks extremely European for a Russian city. Also parts of it remind you of Venice because of the canals. It's a beutiful city and because it's so far north you can experience the phenominon of "white night". Sadly we are in spring at the sun will start to go down around 10 pm so we can't read newspapers in the streets at 2 am, but I know it's possible in the right season. It's quite beautiful here, and beautiful in it's own specific way. I'm very glad this will be the last Russian city I am to set foot in before returning to America

it's been too long

So, the final has been done, and we had a final party. So we practiced this Russian dance like crazy and it didn't come off super well, but it worked when we performed it. It was an emotional week. Last goodbyes to everyone. We said goodbye at the final party, where we saw the last of all our friends. After that we had a couple days left in Nizhney Novgorod and left at the train station. They say that the platforms are wet in Russia because of the tears shed in train stations. It was good, my host family was really sad to see me go. After that it was an overnight ride to Saint Petersburg formerly Leningrad

Uhm i dunno even what to title this

So kids, it's been fun.  I'm finally to the point where all the odd things here seem normal, and everyone is talking about the end.  Sad face :(.  Right now I'm trying to balance finding where and how to do the final paper.  There's alot of things that will happen over the next few weeks, so I think I'm going to try to get alot of the paper done early, if this is early I dunno.  It's been cool, but I feel like I need to get some serious work done. I put up pictures of kazan on my facebook, I have alotmore than i put on there.  I've come to the realization that I wont speak Russian well while I'm here, I don't think I have enough time to do it well, but I do have a functioning mastery of it.  It's not pretty but i can get my point accross.  Well I'd better get to work. Later kids.

So here I am

So I'm with a russian family now.  My host father says i don't talk much, probably because I don't.  It's really hard to speak this language.  I can get about half of what is simply spoken to me now, but still that doesn't quite seem enough alot of the time.  I can say things in Russian now, and I can get my point across with only words if it's a simple question.  That was interesting actually, A japaneese man asked me in russian why I chose to come to nizhney novgorod to study and not moscow and I was able to understand his russian and answer him.  I was really proud of that. Good time.  The food here is good, everything is natural.  I think I'll end up eating rye bread, and drinking whole milk when i come back to the states. You never know.  Everything is cool.  There's also a niece that comes around frequently, the first three days she was here, and I think she spends the weekends here, it's a rather nice appartment.  It's really cool being here, we go to Kazan this weekend.  That'll be fun, I've been busy writing liturature papers and I need to start on my research project in earnest.  Sorry i haven't updated consistantly.

talk to you all when i got more to say... laters

can't hold me back

So this week was very interesting. I had quite alot happen. Well I had agreed to represent Gabon(some random african country) in a Model UN. I felt very underprepared, but they wanted me because I was a native English speaker and the proceedings were in english. Well I did this and it was rather interesting. Those are so professional and I felt so outclassed. Either way I participated and was invited to thier performances, so I got to see alot of traditional dances. I saw a Cossak dance, and some Caucaus region dance, it was really cool. New people moved into the profolactory and one of them was the Chechen that did most of the dances, I got a picture in his traditional uniform, it's sweet. Well other than that we met our host families. So I'm living with a 17 year old brother and a 6 year old sister. My host mom was really nice when I met her, and they spoke entirely Russian. I felt lost, but I understood about 1/4 of it. That'll be interesting. So I now have a mullet, they are totally popular around here. I'm going to have to work on the paper due next week and pack today, but I thought I'd write this now, but I know I'm not very good at keeping up with this thing...

crazyness

So last week when I forgot to write an entry not too much happened during the week. We have alot of random work, but it's not worth mentioning. Only thing that was of mention is that I cut my beard. So ever since we went to Vladimir the boys were wanting to go clubbing. So we finally went clubbing, the only issue is we got to the club at 10:45 and we got a call. So a little background info, the profolactory where we stay closes the door at 11 and will not open it untill morning, unless you have approval by higher powers. Our friends supposedly cleared it for us to return around 3. This was not so, and the Komandant was very angry we were going out. So we were presented with a situation. Party all night or run like crazy back. Myself and a couple american friends had absolutely no problem with that. A good deal of the Russians and the rest of the americans booked it back. So we spent quite some time at this tiny club, got bored, walked around the city at 3 in the morning and went back untill around 4:30. Then we went to the only place to eat that's open 24 hours in this city: a Pizza place. I dunno why they are 24 hour here, but they are the only ones. So we chilled there and ate some pizza, and came home and crashed. It was cool. They met another American friend at chruch, which I had slept through, and I got to meet her at Harley's(director) appartement, where we all spend sunday afternoon with each other and our friends that we've made. Party all night in Russia. One more off the bucket list.

Valentines day

So I can't quite remember the last time I wrote an entry. This weekend we observed our valentines day because we were in valdimir on valentines day. Oh by the way vladimir was really cool, it was a bunch of super old churches, and they let us take pictures inside because some weren't still in use, so I finally have pictures from the inside of orthodox cathedrals. yay. We also celebrated some russian holiday where they eat blini(pankcake/crepey thing) and at the end burn a scarecrow. It's a week long fat tuesday like thing cause lent is right after it.
Back to the valentines day celebration.... It was very interesting. We entertained each other with skits. It was kinda hard to organize these skits because we were very disorganized after valdimir. Me and my roommate lipsank(?) to Mulan's a girl worth fighting for. It was fun. Me and my roommate also got all the girls chocolate and got each one a flower. It was fun. Also I cut my hand trying to make props for our skit, that was interesting, but there are nurses in the place where we stay. I dunno if I said this before but we are staying in a profolactory, where the sick recover, so there are doctors here. I also sprianed my ankle pretty bad getting off the bus. So Ima just recover for a while.