Roam

It always seems to be snowing here in St. Petersburg. It’s sometimes so light and gentle though that you wonder if it’s actually snowing outside, or if it’s just the wind blowing flakes off the tops of buildings. While I miss seeing how the snow accumulates on the trees in Maine or Connecticut in the winter, it is so beautiful here when it snows. Of course, the streets and sidewalks are full of mud and slush, but if you keep your head up everything is white and Christmasy. 

It was warmer out today, and by that I mean it was above 25 degrees fahrenheit while I was out and about. You could honestly tell a difference between yesterday and today. On the way to Smolny this morning, I walked with my hands outside my pockets and I even took my scarf off! I've missed not walking around like I was the Michelin man...  

Classes were uneventful. In my grammar class we went over a structure that I struggled to grasp for most of the class, but I began to catch on towards the end and after asking some clarifying questions, completed my homework with a little more confidence. After classes we had a quick meeting with Mike just to check in about how everything is going. How are the host families? Has anybody had any problems? That kind of stuff. We didn’t have that many comments and we all left around 3 pm. 

I walked back to Vasilievsky on a mission. I was going to find the damn gym today. I had researched which buses go where, to the best of my abilities, and I hopped on the correct bus that would take me all the way down Bolshoi prospekt to what I hoped was the 27th line (or street). The website I was looking at told me to get off after four stops. I did just that, but when I couldn’t find a number on any building around me, I started to walk back the way I came to see where I was once I did find a building with a number on it. I was only on the bus for 10-15 minutes, but it seemed like I was a good distance away from home. I had only been walking a few minutes from where I got off when I noticed a sign on a building that told me I was on the 21st/22nd line. So close, but yet so far! I had already walked some distance and didn’t feel like turning back, so I forgot about finding Alex Fitness and decided to walk back towards the apartment along Bolshoi prospekt. Plus, I remember reading about another gym that was located at 68 Bolshoi prospekt, and I was walking past the 80s at the moment. Miraculously, after a few minutes, I found myself in front of Fitness House! FINALLY. I went inside and inquired about memberships. More specifically, I told them that I only spoke a little bit of Russian but that I wanted to know how much I would have to pay per month. Apparently, they only have year-long memberships. Umm, WHO DOES THAT? Fine Fitness House, be that way. You most certainly will not be having your friendly neighborhood American join your gym. I was definitely bummed, but this whole gym predicament has been so disappointing that I couldn’t possibly be surprised. Of course there was going to be, yet again, another loophole. Ohhh well, my search shall continue. 

I made it to my street, but it was still early. It was also so nice out, what with the slightly warmer temperature and the pretty snowflakes accumulating all over my scarf and hat, that I didn’t want to go back to the apartment just yet. Instead, I decided to walk around. This little stroll, however, went on for an hour and a half longer. I just walked through different streets, plugged into my iPod, absorbing all my surroundings and trying to make sense of all the various signs in cyrillic. I also love people watching, so it was fun to walk through crowds of people and pass different Russian faces on the sidewalks. When I initially got off the bus at the 21st/22nd line, that was at the most western part of the island, and by the time I got home, I had walked all the way to the eastern side where I could see the faint image of the top of the Peter and Paul Cathedral and the back of the greenish blue Winter Palace through the snowy fog, which gave the Peter and Paul Cathedral and the Hermitage a spookier, older air about them. It was a nice, relaxing walk, and I felt a little better about not having worked out in a while when I got home. 

After I went straight to my snack drawer and poured myself a mountain of goldfish to munch on, I sat down at my desk to do homework and decided that instead of going immediately to iTunes, that I should try and find some Russian radio stations to listen to. Ever since I got to Russia, I feel like I’ve been in a bubble. With the lack of wifi on my iPhone, I don’t check my BBC news app every morning. As a result, I feel like I am so out of the loop in terms of foreign affairs, which I enjoy reading every day. Except oh my god Philip Seymour Hoffman died?! I did manage to read about that this morning. How sad. 

I went on to find the Эхо Москвы (Echo of Moscow?) radio station, but I only seemed to find different programs filled with ads and commercials. When I got bored of that 3 minutes later, I realized that I could simply listen to Russians talk about the news on YouTube. I searched for videos of Putin giving interviews about Sochi. The first video that came up was an hour and twenty-seven minutes long of Putin being interviewed about Sochi by representatives of various countries, and I listened to it as I did my homework. Of course I wasn’t actually listening to it, but every once in a while my ears would pick up a word or a phrase I did recognize, and my attention would be captured. I really hope that on a subconscious level listening to Russians speak, at their normal pace whether I’m avidly paying attention or not, will help me improve. I know that I haven’t even been here for 2 weeks yet, but I’m already worried about how much english I surround myself with, and I REALLY want to get better at Russian before this is over. I understand that it takes time; I’m not going to become conversational overnight, but I want to be able to carry a fluid conversation with my Russian professors when I return to Conn in the fall. That is the ultimate goal. I get that 4 months in this country will help me quite a bit and that I will learn a ton in my classes, but what if I don’t? What if I continue to absorb new lessons but forget all about them once I get home? What if I never wake up in the morning with my thoughts automatically in Russian? What if my mind never makes that switch? MUST. NOT. HAPPEN.

I can definitely try harder.