Gah it’s already Sunday! This weekend certainly went by quickly. On Friday night our program coordinator Elena arranged a dinner at a nearby Georgian restaurant for the Americans in the program and some Russian Smolny students. I sat at one end of the very long table, and I just happened to be surrounded by my other American friends, so I didn’t really have any one-on-one conversations with any of the Russian students. Irina, a sophomore at Smolny, sat the closest to us and she sat and listened, asking the occasional question, while we spoke at what probably felt like lightning speed English to her about random topics like Harry Potter, Siberia, and at one point we found out that our friend Clarissa from Williams College smuggled her pet chihuahua over the mexican border when it was a puppy...
We had a bean, onion, egg, potato salad thing with lettuce as the first course, some cheesy bread pizza something which was the most delicious thing I had all weekend next, and then our main course was a meat, potato, pepper stew dish that came out sizzling so loudly it reminded me of when you get fajitas at a mexican restaurant. Except I like fajitas better.
I thought it was very nice that they arranged a dinner between us and some Russian students, but I’m about to rant about something that’ll probably disappoint a lot of people (apologies in advance). In all honesty, I would love to make Russian friends. Isn’t that one, if not the most important, goal of studying abroad? To meet the locals so they can show you what [insert country] is really like? If you ask anyone for advice before studying abroad, I’m positive that one of the first things said will be to not get stuck in the American bubble and to make friends with the locals instead. They are your biggest resources, and befriending them will help you get the most out of your four or five months abroad. I completely agree with that. In fact, before the end of the first week of September this past fall I remember writing my study abroad application and answering questions about what my goals are for studying abroad. Meeting and befriending Russians was undoubtedly one of my goals, and it still is, but a lot has happened since I wrote that application, and my goals for studying abroad have changed drastically. All the goals I wrote on that initial application still hold true, but I have bigger, more selfish aims that have since taken priority. It became clear too early on in my fall semester that I needed to study abroad so that I could get away from Conn and be with new people in a new environment. I needed study abroad so I could escape the toxicity that had seeped into every part of my college and campus, which are two things that I have grown to love inside and out with all my heart over the past two and a half years. I needed study abroad to come faster than it did so I could heal, so I could breathe easier, so I could be reminded of all the things that make me happy. In other words, this semester abroad was going to be dedicated to ME and mostly me only, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes so that I get better. Consequentially, all my energy that I was planning to channel into integrating with the Smolny kids has been reallocated to finding whatever it is that distracts me, makes me comfortable, and makes me happy. That is my top goal, and while I understand I’m not trying my hardest to break through the American bubble, I don’t feel as bad as I should and I won’t apologize for that. At this point, I just want friends. I just want to have a good time, and while I don’t anticipate having this be the case for the next for months, if my only good friends happen to be those in my program then so be it. I’ve been having a great time with them so far, and I have been feeling more and more like myself since literally the day I arrived here. I’m not saying that I’m going to avoid Russians. Absolutely not. I want to make conversation and get to know them, but I’m not going to lose sleep over how many locals I’ve met. I also believe that befriending a Russian would be really frickin’ hard. Guys, I don’t speak Russian. If I can barely get through a conversation at breakfast with my host dad, how am I supposed to talk about the things that normal friends talk about with each other? I sound like the grinch of all study abroad right now, but these are my honest thoughts. I need more confidence and maybe more of a screw-it-all attitude? I don’t know, I have only been here for less than a month. Things are bound to change...
That was a long rant, but anyways, getting back to the dinner, it started late at 8:30, and by the time we got done it was practically 10:30. It was Friday night though, so when we got done a bunch of us went to a bar right by Smolny. I don’t know what type of bar it was, but it was SO COOL whatever it was. There were maps, license plates, retro photographs and posters, shark jaws, and other tourist trinkets covering the wooden walls, most of which were American. There were plenty of anchors and boat steering wheels too (what are those called?), so I guess there was a strong nautical theme. I don’t know, nor do I think the owners of the bar knew what they were going for, but I didn’t care! It reminded me of the store in Bar Harbor called Geddy’s. Moreover, when I was in line to get beer, out of the corner of my eye I spotted a picture of a man with a very unforgettable beard. I left my place in line, went up to the wall, and examined a picture of Rasputin. This guy follows me around EVERYWHERE (but that’s okay with me for now).
I got what everybody else did, and we all sat in a booth, watched skiing, and chatted until midnight before people started leaving to catch the last metros of the night. Some of us stayed later though, for there was supposed to be a night bus to take many of my friends back to the top of Vasilievsky island. I, being the lucky duck that I am, merely had to walk home with friends as they made their way back to the metro. I am super grateful of my location for a lot of reasons, many of them stemming from the idea that on late nights I don’t really have to worry about catching transportation home unless I am with friends exceptionally far away, but also because I think I can avoid trying to figure out the bus or marshrutka system for the entire time that I’m here. If I really needed to take a bus I could definitely decipher the signs and I’ve done it before, but I do not want to hop on a marshrutka anytime too soon. Basically they are vans that have a specific route, but they don’t stop unless you shout at them to. Given my still shaky knowledge of the city and my unfortunate tendency to not assert myself at times, I would probably end up in on the other side of the city if I took one by myself at this point. I’m exaggerating, but only a little. Everything here is scary to me to a certain extent, and at some point you just have to say eyyy what the fuck, but if I can avoid it I am more than happy to do that. I also really like to walk everywhere. Everything is so pretty and I’m still at the point where my head swivels back and forth at a constant rate whenever I walk around the streets because I am still fascinated by all the signs and writing in shop windows. Part of me wonders if they placed me, the least experienced student with Russian, at probably the most convenient location because they thought it would be easier for me to not deal with transportation. Probably not, but I’m thankful nonetheless.
I stayed up watching TV (I have a problem) when I got back from the bar, and I slept in until 11 the next morning, which was GLORIOUS. My host parents left for their dacha early in the morning, and I had the whole apartment to myself. While I am most definitely an extrovert and I need my daily dose of human and friend interaction, I value my sacred solitude. I have no problem with being left alone for a day or two. I would prefer to get out (which I did) and see people, but I actually love the idea of coming back to an empty apartment at times. It’s not like I take advantage of being alone or anything; I simply brought my laptop out to the kitchen table, put on the radio, made myself tea, ate breakfast, got a little bit of homework done, and thoroughly enjoyed being alone. It wasn’t long before I left my things and headed out to the gym. I told my friend Adam that I would meet him there around 1 and I got there on time. When I got back, I hopped in the shower and then heated up the large pot of pelmeni soup my host mom left me. I felt like I ate twice as many calories as I had just burned at the gym, but I didn’t mind. I am always extra proud of myself when I make it to the gym in the morning or before lunch at least. I had to slurp down my soup quickly though if I wanted to leave in time to make it to the Decemberist cafe at 4 pm where everybody was meeting to watch the USA vs. Russia hockey game.
I left half an hour before 4, and I set off with my iPod plugged in. I walked through the streets, crossing the right ones without a second thought like I had lived there all my life, and I found myself experiencing this feeling that I had for the first time when I got to college. I guess the easiest way to describe it would be simply the sense of independence, but I feel like its much more epic and powerful than that. It involves the confidence that comes with being the boss of my own schedule I think. I remember feeling it when I was a freshman at Conn, after the first two initial months of feeling uncomfortable and homesick, when I would walk to the gym by myself on a saturday, completely on my own time, along the overpass with views of the Thames river. I felt it all the time when I was at Berkeley this past summer, and I felt it yesterday so clearly that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have reached a state of comfort here and that I am becoming happier. Perhaps I am still in the honeymoon phase of being in Petersburg, perhaps I’m still living in this vacation-like mindset that doesn’t involve me working hard or being back at Conn (is that just the honeymoon phase rephrased?), but I cannot deny how much coming here has refreshed my very core.
Okay, enough with this philosophical nonsense!
I arrived at the Decembrist cafe a little bit early, but Sean was there waiting before me, and we went downstairs to the basement at our reserved tables in front of the flatscreen. We watched speed skating (how mesmerizing!) as people trickled in one by one. I sipped on mulled wine as we watched the hockey game, and when I wasn’t conversing with friends over Facebook thanks to the wifi, I was shrieking and cheering on our team. We all ate dinner there, and I ordered a burger that had an egg on it, mushrooms, blue cheese, and BBQ sauce. Oh, how deliciously messy that was. The game went on, much faster than I remember hockey games being, and before we knew it, we were in overtime. And then, as most of you who watched the game know, we went into a shootout. I don’t think that I’ve ever watched a real-life shootout live before (the Mighty Ducks doesn’t count), so this made things SO MUCH more fun and intense. We were the only ones down in the basement, while all the Russians were watching the game upstairs. Whenever we scored, we all hollered from the basement, and then we noticed that whenever the Russians scored on us, we could hear everybody clapping upstairs. WE MUST CLAP AND SHOUT LOUDER. Look at that smirk on Putin’s face!! In the end, we won, and it was awesome. I felt a little bad for my lack of compassion with the Russian team, but not really. Sucks to suck, мои русские друзбя!
After the game, it was still pretty early, so some of us went to another bar on Vasilievsky (I’m becoming an alcoholic). This place was huge with lots of comfy couches. We spent the next few hours drinking beer and chatting about the most debate-worthy topics. We asked each other what we thought about Syria, Realism, China, atomic bombs, the Geneva Conventions, torture, abortion, our favorite president, conspiracy theories, whether or not there are morals in war, Edward Snowden, the Watergate Scandal, and the list went on and on. You could almost hear my brain purring as we jumped from one conversation to another. Everybody had read different books, taken different classes, learned different facts that were all thrown into the conversation. Ahh, happiness.
So that was my weekend in a long nutshell. And now I’m in my room, and I don’t plan on leaving the apartment today. I have to catch up on homework, and my body is tired. Hopefully I’ll have some good material to write about in the next few days; my birthday is on Tuesday, and I have no classes that day. So what do I plan to do? Well, as fate would have it, there is a special Romanov exhibit on Vasilievsky starting on the 16th and going until March 2nd. Can I think of a better way to spend my day? NOPE.
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