Hop a Plane

Here's what I wrote last night. I know it's dauntingly long, but I swear they won't be this lengthy all the time! 

Greetings from St. Petersburg! It’s almost 7:30 pm here and I don’t know which side is up. I am so disoriented in terms of the time change and my body is feels like its been awake for DAYS, but I wanted to get this blog started before the chaos that is orientation starts tomorrow. 

I guess my traveling began when I woke up yesterday at 6 am to get ready for my flight from Portland to JFK that may or may not have been cancelled at any moment due to snow. I had been checking my flight status nonstop the day before, and because I guess I must enjoy stressing myself on some unconscious level, I didn’t get very much sleep that night. Thank the gods my flight to JFK took off when it was supposed to, and from there I met my group and everything was pretty easy. 

While I was waiting at my gate at the Portland Jetport yesterday morning, I opened a new book to pass the time. I only brought two books (for pleasure) with me abroad, and I know this blog isn’t supposed to be a book review, but I really just want to rant about them both here quickly. There was no question about my bringing Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie. It’s a historical nonfiction book about the life of the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, and I undoubtedly owe much of my current fascination with Russia to this book. I’ve read it a few times before, but the author is so descriptive about St. Petersburg and all the places that Nicholas and his family spent time in or around that I consider it to be one of the best travel books I could have chosen to bring with me during my study away semester here. Even if you don’t like history or nonfiction, I highly recommend this book for anybody even remotely interested in Russia or a good read (or romance, or drama, or sociology, or politics, etc...) I kid you not, it reads like a novel. 

The second book I brought with me, and that which I decided to open at the Portland Jetport is Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I knew it was supposed to be a book about traveling and that the movie with Julia Roberts looked worth watching, but more than anything it seemed like a feel-good book, and lets be real, my soul has been desperately in need of a hug for a while now. Elizabeth Gilbert, to say the least, is a hilarious writer. The grief and depression she goes through in the book is by no means laughable, but she makes it comical sometimes. On one page I found myself furiously fighting back tears while I sat waiting at gate 6, only to find myself chuckling out loud a few pages later (the lady sitting across from me must have thought I was on drugs). I would also recommend this book to anyone who feels like they’re in a funk. It’ll probably put your problems into perspective and make you laugh (and/or sob) along the way. 

Anyways, getting back to the traveling, once I met up with my Bard-Smolny study abroad group at JFK we took a red eye to Helsinki, and then a quick flight to Pulkovo airport. Once we got our baggage we then took a bus from the airport into the city, and although I was struggling to keep my eyes open throughout most of the bus ride, I noticed that we did drive past the huge Lenin statue in Moskovskaya square, a giant statue of Nicholas I on a horse in the middle of another square, and St. Isaac’s Cathedral. It was definitely enough to wake me up and remind me of why I chose to come to St. Petersburg in the first place. 

Besides that, things are seriously gray. Some other random observations include that Russians drive a lot of American cars., and yes, they really do wear those furry hats that look like woodland creatures. There’s more English on signs and billboards than I expected. There seem to be a lot more parks and wooded areas spread throughout the city, which is wicked cool. Along those lines, I saw people with BABY strollers walking through these parks (through the vicious elements), all bundled up enough so you couldn’t see their faces. It seems as if those babies are introduced to the cold right from the get go. I also don’t want to make any generalizations about the weather considering I haven’t even been here 24 hours, but just based on today it’s not that much worse than a pretty awful day during a Maine winter. Is that comforting? Maybe not. 

I do want to end this first blog post with a little anecdote from my flight from Portland to JFK (and then I promise I’ll wrap up). During that flight, I happened to be seated next to a Ms. Nina Blackwood (so her boarding pass read). She had crazy, uncombed gray hair and a raspy smoker’s voice. I didn’t really hear her speak until the flight attendant made his way over to us with snacks. When he finally turned and looked at Nina and asked, “nuts or cookies?” she responded back with “you know what they say! You are what you eat; nuts!” After our initial laughter the flight attendant then looked at me, and I said that I would have what she’s having, to which Nina asked, “are YOU nuts?” as if it were some sing-a-long, call and respond game. Before I registered the words that were coming out of my mouth, I heard myself say, “Oh I definitely am!” 

All you have to do is ask me where I'm headed.