Finally I get a chance at the Internet

Written October 2

I apologize most profusely for the lack of updating. The internet at Nicole's (the head teacher) can be hit and miss, and it hasn't been letting on my blog lately, something about cookies or other, I don't know what to do about it. Every time I'm around someone who might be able to tell me where a cafe is, I forget about it completely...how typical...there is a rumor that one of the buildings going up near here will have one, we'll have to check it out when we get back from Estonia. Yes, we're planning on leaving for Estonia Thursday night, but we can only go if the stupid University will give us our passports back, there was an issue with insurance that apparently had to be sorted out. If we don't get the passports, we're stuck here, which I guess isn't a huge loss cause hey, we're still in Petersburg, but at the same time, we bought tickets for the bus and made a down payment for the hostel, plus we have all these plans....it would be REALLY annoying.

Since Peterhof we've tried to be a little more touristy, there are just so many things to do here! Out teaching schedules make it very hard to have time to do things, some of us teaching the morning, some in the evening, sometimes both, and we have Russian classes two days a week, in the middle of the day. Basically that leaves us Firday afternoon, all day Saturday, and whatever we can do around church Sunday (in two weeks we want to go to an evening mass thing just to listen to the gorgeous music, I'm still looking for a CD of a good choir). So we try to do things in the hours between appointments, but it doesn't always work. The weather this week has been perfect, warm and sunny, Sveta says it's trying to apologize for the bad weather all September. The Russian call it Woman's Summer, I guess that's their version of Indian Summer.And speaking of Russian, the more I learn, the more I don't know, but people expect me to know! A lot of times I want to find out what a word means but dont' have time to look it up, cause we're walking somewhere or in the middle of a conversation and it's easier to transfer to English. But my family has been very good about letting me stumble through things and try to remember the words they tell me (they've told me how to say later a hundred times, but whenever I need to actually use it, I can't remember!) Other words I've had more success with, and I'm getting better at getting the gist of things and used to the different conjugations of words. Something about me must look Russian because people are always speaking it to me, even when we're in an obvious group of Americans. Realized the other day that I don't really look like any particular race....

I digress. I was talking about things we've been doing. We've done a lot of walking around the city, just figuring out where different places are. The Summer Gardens have been beautiful, we've been there a few times the past couple weeks, watching the leaves turn and fall. When we were on the way to St. Isaacs and the Bronze Horseman we ran into a girl on the street who has been going to college in America, she showed us some good stuff, like a great clothes store and an awesome little cafeteria-like place with good salads and blini, plus it's cheap! We spent some time in the Russian Museum, went on a boat tour of some of the canals and of the Neva (the main river through the city), as well as going to a Rachmoninov concert, which was absolutely gorgeous. Oh, and a Carl's Jr. just opened on Nevsky Prospekt (basically main street here in Petersburg), they were having a huge opening party when we happened to walk by, so we had kind of an American dinner (the burgers were huge, the ketchup was free, and the biggest surprise: they actually had ice! I know! But they kept the great European practice of giving you a number sign and delivering your food to your table.) There is a Pizza Hut about a kilometer down Bolshivikov, I'm sure we'll go there ar some point, when we are desperate for something we really know. But the Russian food has been great. The other night I tried a new fruit, we couldn't figure out the name of it in English, it looks like an orange tomato but eats more like an apple, crisp with seeds in the middle. Any ideas on what it might be?

Ther are many other places we've at least walked past, like the Church on Spilled Blood and the Petera nd Paul Fortress, which is a big complex we'll have to spend all day at sometime. After one Russian class we went to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra (Monastery) to see the famous church and cemetery (lots of big Soviet names, as well as one section devoted to big arts people, writers and composers). Yesterday some of the teachers went to the house of Soviets, took pictures of the great fountains there, and the statue of Lenin that dominates. I got to give a little history lesson to explain who he was and why they still have statues of him, since he was a communist and they are no longer a communist country. The we walked down the street to the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad (the name of Petersburg during World War II). It is in memory of all the people who died in or somehow managed to survive the 900 day siege of the city by the Germans. There is a huge obelisk with the dates 1941 and 1945 on it, facing Pulkovo Heights, which is where the worst fighting was. Ther are also some other beautiful statues of the people and soldiers who worked to keep the city going. I didn't get a chance to really look at them because I had to go back to teach. Behind the obelisk is a statue of 6 people surrounded by a bronze wall, broken in the direction of the Heights, which is also the direction the victory gate faced when the siege was lifted. In this area, meant to symbolize how oppressive the siege was, there is very somber music playing, fitting for the statue showing the mostly broken people. Underneath all this is a memorial hall, lit mostly by 900 dim lamps, with the names of different cities around the city that were destroyed on the walls, as wekk as the names of people who got special awards from the State after the siege was lifted, and flags of different regiments that fought there. There are some artifacts from the city, some letters, a violin, a mostly destroyed helmet, spent cartridges. Apparently there are still scars on the land around the city showing where the front lines were, with trenches and remnants of war. The most poignant thing was video from during the 900 days, showing some of the bombardments, with buildings crumbling and bodies being dragged on sledges through the snow to mass graves on the edge of town. On the ends of the halls there are beautiful mosaics, one during the siege, showing different scenes of suffering, and the other when the siege ended, showing people being reuinited and celebrating. I would definitely encourage you to look up pictures of these mosaics, one is called the victory, I'm not sure what the other is though. It was odd seeing the moneyment on such a beautiful, sunny day, when the world seems so warm and good. The people would have suffered most in the winter, when there was no heat, no food, no water, and really, no hope. I can't imagine living in something like that. As Americans we are so blessed to have only two experiences of war on our soil. One we brought on ourselves (the Civil War) and the other was for just one day, granted a horrible day, but only one. Can you imagine living in horror for 900 days? People starving to death all around you, not knowing if there would be food tomorrow, not knowing if the next bomb would land on your house. World War II was bad enough for the Americans, but at least it wasn't fought on our soil. You can't go to any battlegrounds and trip over rusty helmets or dig to find bullets and guns and maybe even bodies. It put an interesting light on the Berlin Airlift for me too, because Leningrad suggered so much more and didn't have the Americans working around the clock trying to support them. It almost makes sense that the USSR would callously let Berlin die, it woudl have been seen as a fair return for what the Germans did to them. We dont' learn much about Russia's involvement in either of the the World Wars, maybe they are still to shrouded in the hated communist idea for many people to want to know more, but the Russian people suffered so much more than any other country involved, even Germany, which lost both. The Russians lost many more millions of people and went through a lot of suffering. They were badly led and had enough turmoil without having to fight other countries. Sorry, I'm starting to get boring and rambling! Suffice it to say, Russian history has become even more fascinating for me.

There are still a hundred places in St Petersburg that I want to see before I leave, from the Military and Artillery Museum (I know boys, you're jealous :) to the museum of Musical Life and the homes of Pushkin and Dostoyevsky. St Petersburg is such an amazing city! As much as I'm looking forward to going to Tallinn (it was really the one thing I wanted to do on my vacations while I was here) I wouldn't mind getting 'stuck' here either (as long as I get to Tallinn eventually!) We have three days to see the city, it's a fairly small one so we'll be able to see a good chunk of it. One day will be a walking tour type thing, then we each looked in tour books and online for one place we want to go while we're there, and we'll arrange who goes where from there. My kids have been awesome lately, even my Level 3 class was really good! Can't wait to get pictures of them up for you, so you can see who I'm working with and thinking about all the time. Hope you are all safe and healthy! Remember to email me with any questions!