Along similar lines, it's light out most hours of the day now. Today the sunset is scheduled to BEGIN at 22:38, but I think I went to bed around 23:30 the other night without it being completely dark out. My friend Hunter stayed up the other night until it started to get light out, which was apparently around 4 am. It is how you would expect: incredibly weird - especially considering the fact that it was dark around 4:30 pm and the sun didn’t rise until after 10 am when we first arrived here at the end of January. Despite the fact that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to sleep in in the morning, I enjoy all the light. It totally messes up your sense of time, but in a good way. You think it’s 3 pm when it’s really 8 pm, and as a result, you have more energy to do things. It makes going out a lot more fun, and it makes me feel more comfortable walking around at night in the sunlight as opposed to in the dark. Needless to say, I’m pumped for the white nights, when the sun virtually never sets. The sun may never have set on the British navy, but it doesn't set for a while every summer in Petersburg, and it is going to be AWESOME.
This past weekend was pretty busy. On Saturday during the day Jackie and I took the metro several stops up the blue line from Gostiny Dvor with the intent of finding a souvenir market. What we found turned out to be more of a serious junk yard/flea market extravaganza. There were stands and stands of people that extended far back into a dirt filled open space. Can’t describe it in a more pretty way than that. For the people who didn’t have there own stands, they laid tarps out on the dirt with all their items on top. These items, however, looked like they came out of garages and storage bins. I hesitate to call it all crap, because I’m sure some of it was actually valuable, but for all intents and purposes, what we walked through was virtually piles and piles of random crap. There was so much of it too; your eyes were all over the place, taking in Soviet pins, rusty spoons, clothes, roller blades, books, pictures, movies, cassettes, more clothes, shoes, etc... Basically any knick-knack that you could imagine. Jackie and I did our rounds and concluded that no, these were not the souvenirs we had in mind (I did see a hollowed out shark skin though).
By the time I got home, it was almost time to head right back out again. For those who signed up, we were to meet at 5:30 pm to see the play Поздняя Любовь (“Late Love”) by Alexander Ostrovsky. I went into the play thinking that after almost four months in Russia that I would be pleasantly surprised as to how much I would understand of this play. I mean, unlike a ballet or opera, these actors will use gestures and have intonation. That should help me understand, right? NAHT. Forty-five seconds into the first scene and I had already accepted defeat. I got the general gist of the play (a mother and her two sons live in an apartment which is being rented out to a father and daughter - the daughter is their house maid - the daughter falls in love with one of the sons - that son is a cad - something something something loan - something something something black mail - something something something the debt has been paid), but definitely not any of the important details. I’m happy I went though; I hadn’t seen a play in over a year, and Ostrovsky is supposed to be quite the famous playwright.
The next day was spent at Tsarskoye Selo with the group. We had an excursion to the park and to Catherine palace, and we took a private bus there. Because the weather has been so nice lately, the park was so sunny and everything was in bloom. The flower beds were fully occupied and decorated, and the grass was super green. Poor Meg was sneezing the whole time because of her allergies, but I’m sure she’d agree with me that walking through the park was gorgeous. Eventually our guide gave us a nice tour of the palace, which reminded me of Versailles in Paris (which it should have considering the Catherine palace is supposed to be modeled after Versailles... or wait.... is that Peterhof?). There was a giant hall of mirrors which shined brilliantly with gold (at this point, can we expect anything less?), and apparently, you can actually rent that room out for parties. Elton John actually played a concert in that room a few years ago.
Around 3:30 we had a late lunch not too far from the palace. I decided to go back to the Alexander Palace by myself, so I broke off from the group at 4 in order to get to the palace before it closed at 5. It was nice to see the Alexander palace interiors again, especially since I have reread some chapters from Massie’s book since the last time I was there. It was a quick visit, for I left my camera in a locker, and when I got done I walked back to one of the main streets and caught a marshrutka back to the city center.
Tomorrow a bunch of us are headed to Peterhof again, but this time all the fountains will be on. I still have the Nabokov museum, the Dostoevsky museum and the Alexander Nevsky monastery left on my to-do list. I’m going to try to see them in these remanding three weeks, but in all honesty, I may not. I’m so content with everything I’ve done, and I’m totally whipped out. We’ll see though. Finals are next week, and after that we have the last week in Russia free of classes. And my internet will have run out by then, so I’ll need to find something to do.
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