In Memory

     Last year, at about this time, my older sister died while leading a group of climbers down from the summit of Denali, in Alaska. At the memorial, my younger sister and I both declined the opportunity to talk about her in front of everyone, mostly due to emotions being way too high. Now that some time has passed, though, I'd like to share a few stories, because that's what I do. (And just a warning, these aren't all the "oh she was so wonderful" stories... this is a sister's perspective, good and bad!)

Me, Suz, and mom in Seattle

     Suz and I didn't really get along very well. We were only two years apart in age, and shared a lot of the same interests and hobbies when we were young, so it always felt like she didn't appreciate me tagging along, and I didn't like that everyone saw me in her shadow. Ultimately, we did talk this out, many years down the line, but suffice to say, we weren't on the best of terms while growing up. She was busy being the straight-A student, first flute in band, piccolo soloist in marching band, and setting the oldest daughter example. I was busy, well, playing with Morgana, our littlest sister, or reading, or ignoring homework, basically trying to figure myself out. Which, as I'm sure many of you can attest to, is difficult when everyone's asking, "why can't you be more like your older sister?"

Compassion and attitude

     When I first moved out to Colorado, it was after roughly 25 years on the east coast, at least 15 of which had been in the DC area. I had learned how to drive on I-95, and most of my road trips had been through New York and New Jersey. Living in Northern Virginia, you can go from shotgun-toting, chickens-and-rusted-trucks-in-the-front-yard areas to million-dollar neighborhoods with security cameras and locked gates within a half an hour. Everyone keeps to themselves, and if you have to interact with others, it's best to establish a pecking order as quickly as possible, lest someone think you're just another hanger-on to the DC area.

     Moving out to the midwest was a massive culture shock, probably because I wasn't expecting it to be. When you go to another country, you expect things to be different- new language, new culture, new everything (except McDonald's and Starbucks). Moving across the country, however, I had expected things to be roughly the same ol same ol. Perhaps some new hobbies, different scenery, but America is a mixing pot- a homogenous society, right? Right?

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.

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.

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!

Novgorod and a day off.

This is a long post, bear with!     

     This past saturday was a trip to Novgorod, a city about 2 hours' bus ride from St. Petersburg (with the world's slowest driver, though I will admit the road was pretty awful).  We met at a southern metro station at 8 am, which meant breakfast at 6 am. This would have been pretty awful if it weren't for the white nights, which, while not officially started yet, means it's broad daylight from 4 am to 10 pm. So at the very least, the day was light (if rainy) when I had to get up that early. 

Our first stop, outside the city, was St. George's monastery, built an incredibly long time ago, and beloved by someone. Sorry to be flippant, but I've been here 2 weeks, and seen over 50 churches, chapels, mosques and monasteries, and after a bit, they all start to blur together. This particular one had a lovely bell tower, which can be seen in the middle of the picture here (I swear they had us park by the kitchens, the smell was heavenly!). It was also about 20 feet from a lake that varies between 7,000 and  30,000 square kilometers, depending on the season. Seems a little imprudent to me, but oh well. Needless to say, it was more than a little swampy, and the mosquitoes were a) quite prevalent, and b) the size of small dogs. Ok, perhaps a bit of an over-exaggeration, but not by much! Only by having my hair down, long sleeves with my hands tucked in them, and long pants, as well as a scarf over my head and fanning my face often did I manage to

Weather change.

The weather has reverted back to typical St. Peterburg weather, which is very similar to Washington state- chilly, damp and drippy. Quite the change from Colorado, and while I miss the warmth, my allergies are now completely gone, yay!

   Wednesday was... quite the "adventure". We had been told we were to visit the Pavlovsk palace, so most of us dressed for indoors walking. What Artemi had failed to mention, though, is that there was a 2 mile hike on dirt (read: mud) trails to get there! I was very much reminded of Washington and Hawaii on the way, as it was through a deciduous forest with ferns for undergrowth, and where there was any grass, it was supported from underneath by moss. Quite beautiful, moreso because I was actually dressed for the weather! (My backpack, however, is not waterproof, it turns out. The dictionary I have is now quite the worse for wear.)