We Will Rock You

Ladies and gentlemen THE WINTER OLYMPICS!! To be honest, I haven’t really followed the winter olympics too religiously before (I much prefer the summer ones), but I'm hoping to change that and watch as much of the games here as I can. The TV in my host family’s apartment is in my host parents’ bedroom, and I don’t see myself trying to configure their radio (I may change my mind about that later), so it may be tough to keep up with every single event, but I’m definitely going to try. 

Most of yesterday was spent waiting for the opening ceremony. We had tests in grammar and conversation, and I think they went fairly well. To be frank, while I would very much like to do well on these tests, I want to give them as accurate an assessment of my language skills as possible. Don't get me wrong, I would be more than happy if I did really well, but I just don’t want them to get the idea that I know what I’m doing. That would be false. I want to get placed into the group (we were already placed into groups for the 2 week language intensive, but this test we just took with further determine whether I will stay or move around to a different group) that does the most review because most of that “review” will actually be new material for me. The possibility of me changing groups is not based solely on these tests, however. My RSL professors also know me and my level from working with me in class, so chances are I won’t go anywhere and I am totally okay with that. 

After the test I made my way back to Vasilievsky. I went to the gym, which was less scary than it was the day before, and then I went back home to unwind for the rest of the afternoon.  I caught up on emails, Facebook messages, and instead of working on an application for future plans while I had some free time and no homework, I decided to crawl in bed and read instead. I picked up Eat Pray Love from where I left off last, and for the next few hours I followed Elizabeth Gilbert around the Ashram in rural India and painfully chanted the Gurugita along with her for however many pages I got through. 

Then, at 5:30, I signed onto Skype and waited for Laurel Daly to call me. For one week every year, the Lower School at Waynflete has whats called “Global Focus Week.” They pick one country to study for that week, and I remember from my time in Lower School that we had special events devoted to culture and sometimes we even cooked traditional dishes. Basically, this year the Lower School chose Russia for Global Focus Week, and I was asked if I could Skype 2-3 and 4-5 to talk a little bit about my time in St. Petersburg. I Skyped with the 2nd and 3rd graders first, and I talked about why I was in Russia, what the main differences between Russia and the US are that I’ve noticed so far, what the food is like, what the city is like, etc... I think it went well! I don’t know how to talk to children AT ALL though. I don’t know how much they know, and to be safe I simply talk to them as if they were my age (because my god do I remember vividly how much I loathed adults talking to be as if I were a child). I don’t mean to, but I cannot be cute with kids. I just don’t know how! Some people have a natural gift for being around kids, and that’s great for them, but I have no such talent. Dogs, on the other hand, are a completely different story. I converse with dogs like I should interact with children. My voice gets stupid. I stick my tongue out and just want to squeeze them. I call them cute and adorable and I will literally get on the floor to play with them. I just can’t do that with kids! Unless they’re something REALLY special, in which case my heart will swell and I may spontaneously burst into tears (a rare, but possible occurrence). Babysitting stresses me out. I’m convinced whoever I’m babysitting will choke on milk and/or just stop breathing without any reason, at any moment. I’m a complete mess over little humans, and while I’m jealous of those who can whisper to younglings, I’m okay with how I am for now (and there goes any possible babysitting job someone may offer me). Let’s be real, I prefer dogs! But, as I always tell myself in these moments of why-aren’t-you-like-any-other-girl-in-society-who-is-100%-certain-they-want-kids, I think I would feel differently about my own child. Have I ever ranted to you about how much I wish I could travel back in time to hang out with myself when I was 5? 10? 16?! Oh man. If I could hang out with little Livy at 6 I would absolutely die. I believe Little Livy would think Bigger Livy was pretty cool, tee hee. But that’s a completely different can of worms, children, and I won’t bore you any further with that  topic. However, I was thinking on the walk back from the gym yesterday that if I knew as a 2nd or 4th grader that in however many years as an alumni that I would be Skyping with 2-3 and 4-5 about why I was in Russia, I would have been beyond confused. If I knew the expression “what the fuck?!” existed and/or felt brave enough to use it back then, that would have been the first thing out of my mouth. 

Moving on, because I was skyping with the 4-5 until about 7 pm my time, I had told my friends that I would be late and that I would meet them at the bar. The original plan was to meet at the Belgian Beer Bar and have dinner there so we could get good seats in front of the TV there. Unfortunately, the second I left the apartment I got a call from Jackie saying that the whole bar was full and that there were so tables left. They were on their way back to Adam and Alicia’s dorm, where they have a TV, and that which is literally right across the street from Smolny, and that they would meet me at the end of the bridge on the other side. No problem. I made my way to the bridge, taking the same route I do every morning. When I finally got to the embankment before the bridge, I thought I spotted a group of people up ahead and I started to run towards it. Turns out it wasn’t my group of friends, and I thought that maybe I had gotten to the bridge before my group. Suddenly, something caught my eye on the other side of the bridge. It’s Hunter’s red jacket! I immediately spot the group following him, but for some reason, they’re on the other side of the bridge (but guys, the bar was on my side... did you do a big loop?). Nevertheless, I walked in sync with them on the other side of the bridge. When I thought I caught someone’s glance, I started jumping up and down and waving my hands like a bafoon (characteristic Liv). I actually tried shouting “JENNNAAAA!!!” and “SEANNNN!!!” but of course, to no avail over the noise of the passing cars. Ten minutes later I met up with them and we made our way over to Alicia and Adam’s place. We stopped at a small grocery store to get beer, and I randomly picked two with St. Petersburg written on the label. It was definitely a risk, but they bottles looked legit (lovely reasoning on my part). For two large beers I payed $3, and they were actually really good! One was sweeter than the other, and I even wrote the name down so that I could look for it again. 

Once in Adam and Alicia’s suite, we spread ourselves out throughout the room with the TV in it. Over the next 30-45 minutes, we struggled to find a place that delivers pizza. Oh you could imagine all of us. A herd of Americans trying to order pizza in Russia. Most of us had not eaten dinner, and we were getting a little ravenous. Luckily, Will and Sean came through. Adam collected all the money, and in what seemed like hours later, 4 large pizzas arrived (they weren't bad either!). We all sat crammed in Adam’s room and waited anxiously for the opening ceremony to begin. People were checking the time constantly, and you could tell that we were all excited. It felt like New Year’s and the Super Bowl all wrapped in one. We were a group of Americans fortunate enough to be in Russia during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. I’m going to be telling people that for the rest of my life!  

I’m a little ashamed to say that I haven’t seen that many olympic opening ceremonies. I was working as a hostess at a restaurant during the opening for the summer olympics in London, and the second I caught a glimpse of Daniel Craig on the TV over the bar I left my post and sat down on a bar stool. If anyone needed to come in for dinner, they would have to wait until 007’s appearance was finished. My original point was that I don’t have too much to compare Russia’s opening ceremony to, but I thought that it was pretty cool nonetheless. The initial tour through the alphabet was a lot of fun for us students of Russian. We started guessing what would come next, and people said things like “uh oh, what are they going to do with the soft sign ь?” 

I cannot tell you how happy I was to be surrounded by these people in my program. It was so awesome to be around people my age who all got our weird and incredibly specific references. I’ve been able to have nerdy conversations with my friends at Conn about Russia, but this was taken to a whole different level. We all knew what we were all taking about. We got the same jokes, we made likeminded comments, we finished each others sentences, and I loved it all. As you can imagine, I laughed the whole night. Two of the people in my program, Jenna and Beryl, have the greatest sense of humor, and their commentary throughout the whole ceremony was icing on the cake. I tried to keep a mental list going of all the ridiculous things that we’re said, and I regret not writing them down. I remember at one point I heard someone say “Once upon a december...” and then Will replied with, “Have you heard?!” to which I shouted “THERE’S A RUMOR IN ST. PETERSBURG!” If you don’t know what I’m talking about here, you missed a serious part of your childhood (or adulthood, whichever). Go out and find that animated movie “Anastasia.” It’s funny, cute, somewhat accurate (minus Anastasia’s alleged escape and Rasputin’s magic powers... OH WAIT that might actually be true too!), and totally worth the 100 minutes of your life. 

About every 20 minutes, Jackie and I asked each other why Putin was still siting in a chair, and why he wasn’t shirtless riding a bear. We all waited for that so patiently! We imitated Medvedev’s clap. Please tell me you all saw him clap. “He’s got flippers!” I cried. We spotted hammers and sickles in the background right off the bat, and we all translated the cyrillic writing before we all, with a little disappointment, saw that everybody else who doesn’t know Russian also knows what it meant too because they phrases were all translated into English. We made fun of swan lake (“are those the jellyfish from Avatar?” - Jenna), and when we saw all the dancers come out in their old fashion gowns, all the girls freaked out because one of our future excursions involves ballroom dancing lessons in dresses from the 18th or 19th century (“ladies CHILL OUT” - Hunter). We all got a kick out of the Russian hipsters from the 50s, and when everything turned red and you saw tractors and everybody working to build the Soviet state, I said, “guys, I think this is a 5 year plan.” 

That’s just a tidbit of all the different commentary we had going on during the ceremony. I had a great time. I felt silly, and after 3.5 slices of pizza (thats the number only because all the pizza ran out), my stomach was as happy as a clam. I know I’ve only been here for 2 weeks, but sometimes I feel like I’ve known these people for much longer than that. It usually takes me a while to feel comfortable with a new group of people, but I’ve become open with them so quickly, and I attribute a lot of my incredible experiences here so far to that fact. I know that once classes get started we’ll all get into our own routines and that we won’t see each other as much, but I’m glad that we’ve started off the semester with such a solid foundation. I mean, if you willingly decide to spend a semester of your college career in St. Petersburg out of all places, to continue to study Russian, you’ve got to be a little weird, a little insane, and really freakin’ cool by my standards. Before meeting these people, I knew that we were all going to have a lot in common, just by the very fact that we all decided to come here. 

Unfortunately, we were kicked out of the dorm at 11 pm (why? that’s a good question- the big guy who came in was speaking too quickly). A bunch of us walked back to Vasilievsky, and it was the first time that I walked over that bridge at night. If I thought my walk to school in the morning was beautiful, you should have been there with us on the walk back. The lights and reflection of moonlight on the snow was picturesk (how does one spell that word?). It was definitely one of those moments where I stopped and said to myself, “Ok. It’s official. I love this city.” In no time I was back home. Although we all wanted to stay out longer, the metro was going to close in too short of an amount of time to find a place to hang out. Perhaps we will get together again tonight. 

But for now, I have to go. I’m meeting up with some friends to go back to the Hermitage, where our goal is to complete the second half of the first floor, and if we’re lucky, perhaps move onto the second floor. My camera battery is charged, and with no homework to worry about, I am amped and ready to go. 

I shall report back when I can! Ta-ta.