Home again, home again.

Just a quick update to let everyone knwo I'm alive and well at home. Did have that taco dinner with fresh fruit salad, and my friend and her beau made me laugh so hard I cried, so I am in a great mood. Just touching base with a few things and then a shower and bed- I've been awake now for over 50 hours. Sleepytime!

Final countdown

This is the (backside of the) Summer Palace! Apparently, most of it was as gilded as the towers in the background at one point, but one of the queens got annoyed at the constant glittering, and asked that it be toned down, so now it's just accents and a few cupolas that are quite so gaudy. From what we were told, there are more than 800 rooms in the main palace (the multi-story area in the back), and goodness knows how many in the servants' quarters (one-story area in the foreground). We were going to go inside, but a number of cruise ships had docked and unloaded just as we got there, and the line was upward of two hours to get in, so we passed over it and just wandered the gardens. Fine with me!

   This is an example of the "english gardens" in front of the palace itself. Perhaps it's just my long association with the book/ play The Secret Garden, but I associate english gardens with fountains of roses, not laid-out gravel. Meh. Regardless, it was pretty impressive, though apparently one of the many strays about the place thought the black circle at the bottom needed some spreading out. I can't imagine how much work it takes to keep all this looking this orderly, but I suppose after 300 years, you've probably gotten most of the weeds cleared out. :)

  I have no idea what these flowers are, they were all over the Italian gardens, in a huge bush-type plant (think lilac bush size), and they smelled heavenly. If anyone can identify them, I would happily grow about 6 billion of them, just to sit in the middle and back in the scent. The rest of the Italian gardens were also wonderful, well-laid-out, with statuary and vine-covered arches. We missed the lilacs, poppies and irises, but the begonias and petunias were just coming out, so it was still quite lovely.

Revisit after some sleep

Having gotten some sleep and a little bit more food than a candy bar (the ubiquitous ham and cheese sandwich...), I'd like to give a slightly more upbeat update. Well, the ending is more upbeat at least. :) Imagine the following being told in true Lyssa fashion, complete with gestures and facial expressions, it'll be so much more entertaining.

   Class yesterday was certainly trying, but at least the teachers had been notified as to our circumstances (and I'm sure the fact that even Artemi was sick and exhausted helped!), so they accepted that we were falling asleep in class and stumbling over english, much less russian. Grammar class was a brief lesson, then word games- she gave us long words in russian and we had to find words within them. I think the longest word found (out of a 20-letter word, mind you!) was 6 letters, so we're not going to be invited to russian mensa (if it exists) anytime soon, but it was quite fun and hilarious as some people couldn't count how many of each letter were in a word, and sometimes just added letters that weren't there at all!

End in sight

   Although whether it's the end of my rope or the end of the ordeal, I'm not quite sure. Forgive the negative tone of this post, I am running on fumes... or perhaps just the memory of fumes.

   

   Moscow was unexpectedly pleasant, for the most part. We set out on Friday, meeting at the train station at 10:30 pm. This was unexpectedly complicated by the fact that the map wasn't quite honest about it's location, and I didn't know the word for 'train', but I managed to find my way to the required place in time.

We got on the train at 11:20, and set off. It was fairly difficult to sleep, between the white nights and the movement (and random stopping and starting) of the train. We were 4 to a cabin, and I got very lucky with my cabin mates, all of us being fairly calm and quiet. We sat around chatting for a bit, then hit the bunks- 2 on top, 2 on bottom. The guardrail to keep the people on top from falling out of bed was less than stable on the concept of staying in place, so we used a runner from the table to tie the two together- you can see our ingenious design on the side of the picture here.

A breath of fresh air

This is going to be a long post, so grab some popcorn and settle in.

   To catch up from the last few days, this past weekend was fairly uneventful. Another foiled attempt to go to Petergof gardens on Saturday (darn you crummy coastal weather!) had us wandering around an Ethnography Museum which, while interesting, was not what I had psyched myself up for. It was basically a history of all the people of Russia, which are quite a few, and how they used to live. The loom to the right was highly interesting to yours truly, and there was even a (small) bit of fabric woven on the other end of it, with a spinning wheel and drop spindle nearby. I couldn't imagine trying to thread a loom that uses the same type of string for the heddles as what you're trying to weave with. Headache galore.

    After about 3 hours of looking at how various groups of people lived, and working and walking around areas (about 1/3 of the whole museum) that were under reconstruction or closed for setting up new exhibits, I was more than ready to walk out. The prof apparently has a stomach (and legs, feet and back) of iron, because he then asked us if we wanted to stop for the day, and go get lunch... or go to another museum. Sharing looks of disbelief, we all promptly voted for lunch and home, as we won't have another day off til the 26th, when most of us get to start 22-24 hour flights home.

Blah.

Zero motivation to post anything, so just an update to let you all know I'm alive. Bad reaction to food (veggies, i might add) plus a super-boring ballet in literally the worst seats in the house = unhappy Lyssa. I already have my shopping list made for when I get home, just counting down the days. 

Cruise and graffiti

  Cruise! Tuesday after class, we met at a distant metro station and walked over to this where this boat was moored. I was lucky enough to get a single room, I guess because I'm old and crotchety and Artemi (the prof) knows that I don't tolerate drunken shenanigans.  And lordy were there drunken shenanigans. Just like the trip to Europe I went on with Morgana, a lot of the kids had never encountered absinthe, and thought it would be the best thing in the world to knock it back like soda. Brilliant. Anyhow.. the cruise started at 8 pm, and we had to wait a bit for a bridge to go up, as the water level is pretty high at the moment, but we kept going during the night, and arrived at Valaam Island, located at 61 degrees N in Lake Ladoga. We got very, very lucky and it was a beautiful day. A touch windy, but no clouds in the sky and probably 63 degrees (F).

Mini-update.

  Our boat docked a bit late today, and I messed my knee up a bit on the trip, so I thought we were all seriously behind time this morning, and forgot to grab the cord to my camera. As such, this post won't have any pictures, and will be a bit short, but rest assured that tomorrow I will rectify this lack!

  Short overview: I've been on a cruise for the last 2 nights and one day, visiting Valaam Island, on Lake Ladoga, which I believe is the biggest inland lake in Europe. It's about 60 by 40 miles, and occasionally freezes. We walked a total of 4-5 hours on Wednesday, and I managed to make it to the last 100 yards from the boat before falling and messing up my knee. All in all, not too bad. More tomorrow, I'm off to see who managed to stagger into class and/ or be sober today. I'm so glad I'm past the "stupid drunken shenanigans" phase, not that I really did much in that phase anyway. Cheers!

Busy week

Just got this coming week's schedule, and we have something literally every day but Friday, including a "cruise" from Tuesday to Thursday. I foresee a very negative attitude coming up.

   Regardless! This past week was fairly nice, despite having to study like mad all day on Sunday for a midterm that's in an hour or so. Friday was the Russian Museum (of Art), which, while an imposing structure, is certainly not laid out in logical lines. Moreover, I managed to come up out of the metro on the wrong side of the street, and wandered about like a fool for a bit before reorienting myself. In the process, though, I stumbled upon this gem: a random statue of Yoda, amidst all the very serious history of St. Petersburg. Why? No idea, but it amused me, so here it is. :)

 This poor gentleman (who I'm sure is a very distinguished something) seemed to sympathize with my feelings. He's been captured for posterity with a lopsided head, uneven ears, looking like he's sucking on a lemon, and none to pleased with the world. The back of his head was either the practice spot for aspiring plastic surgeons of the time, or was not finished. What a horrible way to be remembered! And yet, he struck a chord with me, and I found him interesting, so I suppose there's something to be said for not looking fantastic. 

Opera

   No pictures, just a quick update. Went to an opera last night- Don Quixote- and was pleasantly surprised to find it was performed in French! Still a touch hard to understand, due to operatic singing style, but I got more out of it than the English opera we went to. It was with a full-on orchestra and a HUGE pipe organ in the back, an utterly worthwhile night.

   On a side note, I had been listening to Les Mis in French on the way there, because I miss my 2nd language, and a woman stopped me to ask for directions (this happens often, apparently I look sufficiently Russian, or confident, that I'm mistaken for a local often). I was still in French mode, so I answered in French, but once we both recovered, I was able to help her find where she was going. I'm so proud of myself! 

   Doing an island tour this weekend, then have Sunday off again (thank goodness). Got a paper to look through for something to do, and there's a story in there about Russia sending astronauts to Mars? I'll have to sit down and actually read it, but that's what I got from a quick scan. Hope your weekends go well. Cheers!