Six Days
I've been collecting postcards to give to my host family. I think I'm going to try to put them together with some pictures I've taken to make a collage of America. I've been reading my Russian literature anthology and
Crime and Punishment. I've always disagreed when people say this, but Russian people can be depressing. Most of the fiction I've been reading have involved someone dying or their heart getting broken! On the other hand, authors tend to write more about strong emotions than happy little everyday incidents.
We had our Russia party on Sunday. Everyone liked the food, and it was pretty good. We had (here's a test of Russian font) щи, пасха, пирожки, and пончики. That is, cabbage soup (with beef), Easter cheesecake/pudding, little meat pies, and doughnuts. It took about two hours to cook stuff, and since I'm not the family cook, we had some near disasters. A lot of the cabbage didn't make it into the soup. I showed my orientation video which hopefully answered most of their questions. One thing I found out while preparing the video was that 14 people have died from racially motivated attacks in 2006. Now, I knew I would get some extra attention, but I feel like I will have to be extra careful. No clubs, I guess! I'm going to get a video on self-defense at the library.
Rough Guide
I got my
Rough Guide to St. Petersburg a few days ago. Just for fun, I decided to compare SPB to my home city. The Rough Guide to Gastonia would be about 50 pages.
Year Founded:
Gastonia: 1846
St. Petersburg: 1703
Named After:
Gastonia: William Gaston, congressman and state Supreme Court Justice
St. Petersburg: Peter, disciple of Jesus and the first Pope
Population:
Gastonia: 66,000
St. Petersburg: 5,000,000
Famous People From:
Gastonia: James Worthy, Darrell Armstrong (both basketball players), Fred Durst (of Limp Bizkit)
St. Petersburg: George Balanchine (cheoreographer), Alfred Nobel (dynamite inventor/Nobel prizes), Vladimir Putin (current Russian president), among others
Famous Events In:
Gastonia: Loray Mill Strike of 1929, led by American Communists that eventually led to the deaths of police chief Orville Aderholt and a striker named Ella Mae Wiggins. Aderholt now has a bridge named after him.
St. Petersburg: Decembrists' Revolt of 1825, February and October Revolutions of 1917 (the beginning of Communist Russia) as well as the deaths of people like Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and many of the tsars.
Number of Museums:
Gastonia: 1
St. Petersburg: 113
So there is a connection! The organizer of the Gastonia strike, Fred Beal, fled to the Soviet Union after being convicted of Aderholt's death. Needless to say he was disillusioned from Communism.
You could do a tour of St. Petersburg just on where people died. The highlight would be the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood--built where Alexander II was murdered.
So there is lots to see and do, but I don't want to be a tourist for eight weeks. I want to see what the city is all about.
A Million Things Could Go Wrong
After reading three or four travel books, I have learned that a million things could go wrong in Russia, from minor (getting scammed out of some money) to somewhat important (losing my passport/credit cards) to major (getting assaulted by skinheads). So I am going to stop worrying about those things. I will be aware, but I am not, as my mom suggested, going to limit my activities to my apartment and the university. I'll be in St. Petersburg! A huge city, with something like 168 museums. Dostoevsky, my favorite Russian author, lived there. Nijinksy danced there. I'll try not to go anywhere alone, but I'm a solo person.
I can't wait. 28 days. I don't have the money, I haven't finished packing, but I'm ready to go.
Intro
This is where I will post my musings on Russia! Right now I just preparing to go.
