Run

Today was beautiful. It was so sunny outside, and it wasn’t too cold out either (by St. Petersburg standards, of course). As usual, I enjoyed my morning walk to school and being able to see the Winter Palace clearly from the bridge I walk over everyday. During that 20 minute walk to Smolny, I first walk down a few streets to get to the end of Vasilievsky island where I pass individuals on their morning commute. Many wait for the bus, some hail marshrutkas off the streets, and others, like myself, walk through the cold all bundled up. I walk past small grocery stores and banks, restaurants and bars, until I reach the embankment on the Neva. I cross the embankment, and walk to the left alongside the Neva for 5 minutes before I reach the bridge. On my right, I see smoke stacks in the distance, a golden church with onion domes, colorful, tall buildings, and a giant ship that looks like its from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, except this one is immobile and frozen in ice. It looks almost out of place as cars and buses whiz past it, but it’s nevertheless super cool to look at. The year is 2014, but this kind of ship is still in the Neva, almost as if it hasn’t moved for centuries. I wonder what its current purpose is... 

Once I get on the bridge, all I have to do is turn my head to the left to spot the Winter Palace, the Peter and Paul Fortress, and the top of St. Isaac’s cathedral. Majority of the Neva is frozen, but you don’t really see ice. Instead, the water is so frozen over and it has been that way for some time now that so much snow has collected on the top to make it look less like a frozen river and more like what I would imagine Antarctica to be like. There are some parts of the river that are not frozen, however, and sometimes I’ll see ducks playing in these pools that, when it's really cold out, have steam wafting on their surfaces. It takes me another 5 minutes to cross the bridge (I walk fast), but it has the best view of my entire morning commute. Starting in the springtime these bridges connecting Vasilievsky to the main part of St. Petersburg lift up (like the South Portland bridge) after midnight or so to let big ships pass under, and I while I trust the stability of this bridge, I still sort of hop over the section of the bridge where the two parts meet. It’s easy to tell where this part is because they have triangular teeth and come together like a shark’s mouth. 

Ever since I can remember, I’ve always been afraid of walking over pot holes or those drain sections in streets (do they have a name?) that have a metal criss-cross covering over them. Does that make any sense? Sometimes they’re vents...? Anyway, I asked my parents a few years ago if I fell through one when I was a toddler and blocked it out because, for some crazy reason, TO THIS DAY I still don’t like walking over them. Of course I do, but every time I do, I acknowledge it and wonder if I’m going to fall through. I wouldn’t call this a phobia by any means, but it’s just another one of my weird quirks. Moving along, once I get done walking over the bridge I cross the English embankment, and then turn right onto Galernaya ulitsa where Smolny is located. Other people have a much longer commute which involves metros and busses to get to school in the morning, so I’m incredibly lucky that I get to walk it, despite the freezing temperatures. 

My day was normal. They jammed a lot more information in my head, but it’s all good. I’m often anxious in class because I don’t know as much as everybody else, but I’m comfortable making mistakes and asking questions (you don't really have any other choice). I also know that I have less experience with Russian than everybody else, but to be honest, I don’t think it's THAT obvious. Other people make mistakes all the time, and if I don’t know a specific vocab word, chances are there is somebody else in the class that doesn’t know either. Everybody else brings something to the table, and I feel relieved that I don’t stick out. And even though I stress sometimes about understanding the material as its being explained at such a rapid pace, I get a thrill out of how fast everything is going. It’s challenging, but I get really excited when I understand all this new material. I have learned probably more than a month’s worth of instruction in these past two weeks, and I’m excited. With that said though, the more and more I learn about Russian, the more and more I understand why people say Russian is one of the hardest languages to learn. I didn’t think that was true, say, a semester ago, but at this point, I’m learning all these things I could have never even imagined existed in linguistics. For example, Russians have two words for the word “through:” через (cherez) and сквозь (skvoz). You use через when you do things without difficulty and there’s generally no obstruction (the sun shone through the window). However, if you want to say that nobody could see through the frozen glass window, you have to use сквозь. Furthermore, if you’re in the woods and you want to say that you walked through it, it depends on how much swerving you had to do to get through the woods. If there are not a lot of trees and its more of an open space, you use через. However, if you are a hobbit trying to reach a mountain and there are roots everywhere and the trees are so dense that you can’t see through to the end, you must use сквозь. I’m oversimplifying here, but you get the idea. Russian is an incredibly precise language, and for that reason I think it's more sophisticated in some ways than English, but boy, you really have to think about everything before you can produce a simple sentence (don’t get me started on verbs of motion, dear lord). 

Back to my day. After classes ended, Jacob, Will and I walked back to Vasilievsky island in search of a gym on средный проспект (sredny prospekt), and I can finally tell you now that I found a gym! I did end up buying a membership for a month, but I must tell you about this gym. First of all, the gym is located under an arch in off the street. You walk under an arch off of the sidewalk, down a really dark and sketchy alley (it was short though) before you end up in a "parking lot" of sorts. After looking at each other skeptically, Jacob, Will and I spotted a sign stating fitness something that pointed to stairs which looked like they were leading into a basement. It was. With a mixture of curiosity and apprehension, we walked down the stairs, opened the door, and found ourselves in a gym... of sorts. Your nose knows that you’re in a gym before you look around to see all the weight machines. Now, I’m going to sound pretty spoiled here, and for that I apologize sincerely. I’m used to my newly renovated gym at Conn, and over break I worked out at Planet Fitness. This gym here was grungy and to be frank, really freakin’ scary at first. Not that I’ve ever been in a Russian prison (*knock on wood*), but if Russian prisons provide their inmates with any sort of gym facility, this seems like it would be the place. The gym was dark and it consisted of two connected rooms. I spotted two treadmills, two bikes, and the rest of the machines were those that I don’t really use unfortunately. Heavy metal was playing in the background. There were posters of meatheads, but also some nike ads blown up into posters too. The place put me a bit on edge, but in a twisted way, it had its charm. It kind of reminded me of Average Joe’s from the movie Dodgeball, but worse. However, Атлет is less than a 15 minute walk from my apartment. The prices were cheaper, and I could pay by the month. Additionally, the owner and the woman working with him were super friendly and patient with us. They were in their 30s I’d say and they gave me a good vibe. I thought for a few minutes before I made my decision to buy a membership for a month. Let’s be real, I am desperate, and I don’t want to have to take a bus or the metro to work out. It’s convenient and it has the bare necessities. Once everything was said and done, I went and got changed. I hopped on the treadmill and ran for 30 minutes, which went by fast (they never do). I walked around the rest of the machines afterwards, and I noticed some fun wall decorations. There was a poster of Muhammad Ali, and another one of Lebron James. There was also a lovely wall painting of Gerard Butler (it was actually very well done) from the movie 300 with “TONIGHT WE SQUAT IN HELL” written in English, in red. And then, oh ho ho I couldn’t believe it, there was a legitimate painting of our comrade Lenin on the wall. Ohhh my god I’m in Russia. 

In any case, I left the gym happy. It was still sunny out, and I felt much better about getting a little exercise in (although since then I’ve eaten 2 cookies, 4 little chocolate candies, a full dinner, goldfish, blackberries, peanut butter crackers, etc... [not in that order] IMA MONSTAH). I’m hoping to go back tomorrow afternoon. There’s a chance I may be seriously stressed out after taking the tests tomorrow, and I may need to run it out. 

Wish me luck!